Colin Cotterill - The Woman Who Wouldn't die

‘We’ll let him tire himself out with the caskets,’ said Siri. ‘Then we’ll think of something. None of us is as young as we think we are.’

There were seven caskets in all. Tang crawled up on to the sandbank and collapsed on to his side as he collected his breath. He didn’t even have the strength to remove his oxygen tanks. He had a short stout knife in his belt which he used to prise open the first casket which sat beside him. The lock and the hinges were rusty so it didn’t present any problems. From their point of view, the team could not see into the box and they were too far away to notice the expression on the face of the Vietnamese.

But Siri did see something else. A shadow was emerging from the woods on the far bank. It blended into the foliage and when it stopped moving he lost sight of it completely. He knew there was nothing human about the shadow. He was used to such sights but had never sensed such a feeling of foreboding.

Tang turned to another cask and wrenched off its lid with more urgency. Something appeared to be wrong. He turned to a third casket.

The shape in the woods shifted slightly and caught Siri’s gaze once more. Then he spotted a second to its left. Larger, this one, and without question the form of a person.

The diver was on the fifth casket. He was clearly not enjoying the task. The last two lids he ripped off with his bare hands. He threw down the knife and reached into the last box and produced a black Buddha image — the type one might find in any village temple in the land. He fumbled around for the knife and began to hack away at the statuette.

‘Wh … what’s he doing?’ Geung asked.

Ugly growled as he scanned the woods down below. He was sensing what Siri could see, hundreds upon hundreds of human shapes emerging from the forest. Once they left the camouflage of the jungle they seemed to have no colour at all. Like viewers at a tennis match, they sat on the grass bank and watched the diver overturn every last casket and empty hundreds of images on to the ground. He hacked at them with his knife. Smashed one against another.

‘They aren’t going to like that,’ said Siri.

Daeng looked up to see her husband staring in the wrong direction.

‘See something?’ she asked.

‘It’s like a Cecil B. DeMille ghost epic,’ said Siri.

Daeng had long since stopped asking, ‘Who the hell is …?’

‘Cast of thousands,’ said Siri. ‘It’s a bit frightening. I’m not sure how any of these fit into my “Waiting room to the beyond” theory. They’re connected to the Buddha images somehow.’

‘What are you seeing there?’ Civilai asked.

‘All sssitting down,’ said Mr Geung.

They looked at him. He shrugged.

‘Ah, he sees ’em too,’ said the headman. ‘There’s them that can.’

The diver was beside himself with anger. He paced back and forth with the canisters still attached to his back. This obviously wasn’t the type of treasure he’d been expecting. He hurried back to the river, reattached his mask, and threw himself into the water.

‘He thinks he missed something,’ said Daeng. ‘But he didn’t. Now’s our chance. We can get down there and grab the guns.’

They all stood and worked their way down a steep rocky path that led to the Elbow.

‘Probably expecting something more royal,’ said Civilai. ‘Crowns with rubies and mitres and pouches of diamonds. We talk about our national treasure and naturally everyone thinks of jewels. But each to his own. To the royals, these images were priceless because they’d been worshipped for hundreds of years. They’d clocked up a lot of merit. The king probably had them locked in a vault somewhere and kept the emeralds and pearls in his sock drawer.’

Small rocks were dislodged by their descent.

‘All that planning,’ said Daeng. ‘How frustrating would that be? The unnecessary deaths. The investment. You’d have to feel sorry for him. I wonder who he is; how he achieved all this.’

‘I was about to say that it probably couldn’t get any worse,’ said Siri who had stopped to watch the gallery of observers. They were standing now and moving towards the boat. Moving like trees swept up in a lava flow.

‘What is it, Siri?’ Daeng asked.

‘I wish I could sell tickets,’ he said.

‘Come on,’ she told him. ‘No time for ghosties.’

The grey spirits of antiquity usually had little to do with the malevolent spirits of the forest — nasty bastards who had made Siri’s life a misery on several occasions. But somebody had cut a deal somewhere in the jungle and the spirits that resided in the images began to merge into the two huge teak trees that anchored the cables. Within seconds, every last one of them had been absorbed into the wood.

‘That’s a good trick,’ said Siri.

‘Don’t keep it to yourself, old man,’ said Civilai.

‘Just keep your eyes on the two old teaks that the cables are tied around,’ said Siri.

But only he could see what was happening. Only he had stopped to view the show. He was left behind at the rear as the others hurried down the dirt path. He leaned against a large boulder that overhung the river and noticed the lack of sounds. There were no birds. No insects. Even the rumble of water as the river rounded the bend had become silent. There was an imbalance between nature and the supernatural. The first sound to invade this silence was a creak. Perhaps it was more a groan as the old trees strained against the weight of the boat. It was as if they could no longer hold it. Then, one after the other, the cables began to slice through the trees like cheese wires through Camembert. Siri looked down to see whether the others had noticed but he was alone. One second the boat was anchored, the next it was loose. At first it lurched to one side. Then it slid rapidly into the water, dragging its cables behind it. In a single breath it had vanished beneath the water and a bubble the size of a small whale belched to the surface. The gunboat was back at its resting place. Siri’s eyes returned to the two old trees. He expected them to topple to the ground like candles sliced through by a Douglas Fairbanks Jr sword. But they stood firm.

He heard the voices of his colleagues below.

‘They couldn’t have been tied very tight,’ said the headman.

‘Funny they should both come undone at the same time,’ said Civilai.

‘I think they must have snapped,’ said Daeng.

Siri looked on in amazement. Had they not seen the cables slice through the teak? Was he the only one who knew what had actually happened? In fact … had it happened?

When he reached the bank at the Elbow, all was quiet. His colleagues were standing on the bank looking out across the water. There was nothing to see. Nobody really expected the diver to reappear, but for ten minutes they watched with their AK-47s trained on the Mekhong as it passed on its way to Vientiane. But, in some way, the diver did return to the bank. And he did look forlornly at the piles of iron Buddha images before stepping into the forest to face whatever retribution the spirits might have for him. Without the air-compressor to replenish the supply, there had been barely a minute’s worth of oxygen in Tang’s tank. He’d died an agonizing death trapped in the cargo hold of the gunboat. But only Dr Siri knew any of this. If, in fact, he really did.

‘We should go now,’ said Siri.

‘He might still be alive down there,’ said the headman.

‘No, he’s gone,’ said Siri.

They all turned around and looked at the doctor.

‘What about the images?’ Daeng asked.

Siri looked at the boatman and smiled.

‘If I were a lost Buddha,’ he said. ‘And I found myself far from home for many years, I would look very kindly on anyone who volunteered to take me back to Luang Prabang. The palace is a museum now but one of the old royal temples would gladly take them in.’