Colin Cotterill - Disco for the Departed

“What was it?”

“We didn’t hear anything else about it.”

“Didn’t you ask?”

“We went back to Xam Neua the next day and were busy with the inspector. He wanted this and that changed. You know what they’re like. Afterward, nobody seemed to know anything. We sort of forgot all about it.”

“Hell! If it had been me, I would have exploded with curiosity,” Dtui told him.

“It’s true,” Siri agreed. “I’ve seen Nurse Dtui explode with curiosity, and I have to tell you, Bui, it isn’t a sight you’d want to witness twice.”

There were still a couple of hours of daylight when Siri and Dtui reached Vieng Xai. They stopped at the guesthouse only long enough to check on Panoy and pick up two flashlights and a kit of assorted tools. Three messages from Lit awaited them. Each asked that they get in touch. Siri and Dtui ignored them and headed off to the caves.

Dtui was amazed to see the concert hall hidden within the karst. It seemed even larger now to Siri without its midnight crowds.

“Something’s been drawing me here since we arrived in Huaphan,” Siri confessed. “I should have paid more attention.”

“It’s enormous,” Dtui said. “Where do we start looking?”

“Up top are the chambers and the general’s quarters. Down below we have this space, then there are various alcoves, and there’s a long tunnel that leads to the other end of the mountain, where we should find the dining and kitchen area. I suppose we should just poke around till something sparks our instincts.”

“Doc?” Dtui looked around at the high, arching walls, her flashlight making ominous shadows behind the irregular overhangs. “We are… you know… alone here, aren’t we?”

“We should be,” he told her honestly. “Until about midnight.”

“What happens then?”

“The disco starts.”

He walked toward the stage, leaving her wondering whether that was a Dr. Siri joke or whether she should perhaps keep an eye on her watch. Together they scoured the walls for any icons or symbols similar to those they’d seen at the altar. They saw none and the question remained: why would Isandro and Odon bring Hong Lan here as a sacrifice when they had a bloodstained shrine set up inside the president’s cave?

They went through the auditorium inch by inch without result, then began working through the alcoves. Here the military had plotted its strategies, learned the arts of bomb making and guerrilla warfare, and played ping-pong by candlelight. There was one small room where male nurses, trained by Dr. Siri, had administered medicines, and one more that had served as an armory. But none of them yielded any secrets.

“So, I suppose we should go through to the kitchen,” Siri decided as they neared the narrow tunnel drilled fifty yards through solid rock. They stepped over an underground stream that had been steered into a concrete conduit. Once it had been used as a collection point for drinking water. Siri led the way into the tunnel, then abruptly stopped. Dtui stumbled into him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Dtui, back up.”

She did so. “What is it?”

Two things had caused Siri to stop. The first was a feeling as if someone else’s legs were inside his own, walking in the opposite direction. The second was a recollection-the vision he’d seen in the guesthouse bathroom-of Isandro lying serenely under water. He turned back to look at the trough through which the water flowed. It was no more than two yards long, designed to gather the naturally flowing water together at one side of the walkway, then release it on the other side. Once free to find its own level, the stream spread out rapidly before disappearing beneath the rock face.

“Shine your light down here, Dtui.” The ground sloped gently downward for three or four yards. The earth was a mixture of clay, sand, and fine gravel. It was one of the few sections of floor, presumably because of the running water, that hadn’t been banked in concrete. Without taking off his old leather sandals, Siri squatted in two inches of water.

“You see something?” Dtui asked.

“I’m not sure. Would you mind going back a few yards and shining your lamp from a different angle?” She did what he asked. “A little higher, perhaps. Splendid. Can you see anything?”

She tried to. She squinted and jiggled the light, and willed herself to see something, but apart from the uneven ruts, there was nothing unusual. Unless, the ruts… She raised the light even higher, then walked slowly back toward Siri. At last she’d seen what he’d seen. It could merely have been the different quality of the soil, or the packing of it, or the slight ridge, but there were two distinct shapes. They were oval, side by side, too neat and regimented to have been caused naturally.

“Dr. Siri. I see them. You don’t think…?”

“Only one way to find out.” He went to the concreted area and swung his old army pack from his shoulders. It contained the tools they’d brought with them from Vientiane. As they hadn’t known what to expect, they had an interesting collection. He gave a short-handled garden spade to Dtui and took a cement trowel himself.

First they confirmed that the area around the ovals was more tightly packed than that within them. This increased their belief that something might have been buried there. They dug at the center of the first oval, a more sensible and less tiring method than attempting to empty the entire space. At a depth of about two hands, they began to dig with more care. If a body had been buried there, it wasn’t likely to be very deep.

Down they went-three, four, five hands-and still they encountered nothing. Clear water filled their hole and caused small avalanches to frustrate their work. Before they realized it, both of them were sopping wet and getting colder as the night mist enfolded the looming cliff.

Suddenly, Dtui stopped digging and sat back. “Dr. Siri…”

“I know,” he said.

They were seven hands deep and had hit tightly packed mud. What they’d expected to be a grave was, in fact, empty. Dtui felt an odd sensation. She was aware that something had happened to her sense of decency over the previous year. Before this, she would never have dreamed of digging into wet earth, hoping-yes, she had actually been hoping- to find a body. She knew Siri had been hoping also. What kind of person had she become? She was a ghoul.

“I suppose we shouldn’t be disappointed,” Siri said, mirroring her own feeling.

“Hardly worth trying the other one,” she added.

“Not much point.”

“It’s getting late. We really should take a look through the other chambers before…”

“The disco?”

“Right.”

But they both looked at the second oval the way children, already full, might stare longingly at one more sweet goat’s-milk roti, wondering if they could perhaps make a space for it. Without a word, they were soon on their damp knees, scraping away at the top layer of gravel. At three hands, Dtui’s fork was met by something solid.

“Doc?”

Immediately the water filled the hole they were digging, and something floated up to the surface. It was a wooden shirt button. Without a word, they pulled back to broaden their excavation site. For another hour they worked carefully to exhume the body that lay beneath the stream. They scraped away the gravelly sand and piled it behind them so it wouldn’t collapse back into the grave. When at last the body was completely exposed, lying in a bath of crystal-clear water, Siri and Dtui stood on either side, shivering in the dank cave. Their flashlight batteries had almost expired, and faint beams of light shimmered onto the weird scene before them.

“Dtui,” Siri said at last. “I doubt you or I will see anything like this again as long as we live.”