Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

At the base of the doorway, tens of pairs of felt slippers lay fanned out across the floor as if their owners had just stepped out of them. Luca kneeled beside them, pressing his head to the cold floor as he tried to see under the crack in the door.

The first thing to hit him was the smell. As the air circulated under the door it wafted across his face, burning his throat and making his chest suddenly tighten. Inside, he could see a cavernous room lit by immense flaming candelabras arranged at intervals along the vaulted walls. At the far end of the room was a line of seated monks.

He couldn’t see all of them, just the first few, their heads swaying in drifting circular motions as they continued an endless chant. Further towards the left, he could see the doorway to another chamber. It was open, and a light was shining from it.

Luca moved his head slightly, trying to get a better view, and saw a thin figure being escorted to this next chamber by two strangely clad silhouettes. The figure between them could barely stand. As Luca pressed his head harder to the ground, trying to see who it was, he caught a glimpse of a monk, eyes rolling and face completely drained of colour, before the inner doors were slammed shut and he disappeared from view.

Luca lay there, blinking his eyes and trying to make some sense of it all. A headache had spread across his forehead and he was finding it hard to think. The tightness in his chest was getting worse and he could taste the chemical taint in his mouth.

Why was a drugged monk being led into some strange ante-chamber? What were they doing in there?

Gripped by a sudden fear, he raised himself to his feet but the blood rushed to his head. He widened his stance, trying to keep his balance, but felt disorientated and sick.

There was the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door and then a scraping as heavy metal bolts were being drawn back. The ceremony had finished, the monks were leaving.

Luca staggered off down the corridor, trying to break into a run, but his legs felt clumsy and slow. After a hundred yards he rounded the corner, looking for the piece of chocolate on the staircase he had come down. It wasn’t there.

How could he have turned the wrong way?

Ahead of him the corridor branched off into two narrower passageways and he stopped, wondering which to choose. To his left, a large metal chain was wrapped over a circular wooden wheel and bolted to the wall. He moved closer to one of the flaming candles and tried to think, but the sizzling noise of the wick burning through the candle was growing impossibly loud. Luca stared at the dancing yellow flame as a long plume of black smoke belched out on to the wall above.

As he stared at the light, his jaw slack and his eyes wide open, his mind started to fill with strange, swirling images. It was that smell . . . It was making him feel faint. His eyelids were getting heavier.

He heard footsteps, then voices. They were drawing closer. Light from around the corner appeared on the wall. Luca shook his head, trying to snap himself out of it, when his eyes came to rest on the metal chain reaching down to the floor. He looked more closely. It was a trapdoor, cut into the stone floor below.

With a dull metal clank from the chain, he heaved open the trapdoor and shuffled down the wooden ladder, drawing his lighter from his pocket but not sparking it.

Beneath, there was absolute darkness.

There was a padding sound above him as a procession of felt slippers walked over the timbers of the trapdoor, then eventually silence. Luca waited a moment longer, listening to the sound of his own strained breathing, before finally rolling his thumb down the flint of the lighter.

As the flame sparked, the outline of a terrifying figure exploded out of the darkness. Luca jumped back, pressing himself against the wall, and accidentally let his thumb off the gas, sending the space ahead into pitch blackness. It took a moment for him to steady his nerves and realise that the figure was nothing more than a painting on the wall of the narrow tunnel he now found himself in.

With the lighter held high above his head, he took in the picture. It was of some strange god with blue skin and flaming orange hair. Its lips were pulled back, snarling ferociously with great incisor teeth and yellow eyes that stared accusingly ahead. In its hands were dozens of naked human figures, which were being crushed and burnt in the fires all about its hideous body.

The figure was part of a mural that stretched the entire length of the corridor, from floor to ceiling, reaching back into the darkness. Luca slowly edged his way along, eyes transfixed by the scenes before him. There was just an overwhelming array of colour and form.

‘What is this place?’ he whispered.

In a deep alcove off the main stem of the tunnel, his lighter picked up another figure. It was statue of the Buddha, about four feet high and raised on a plinth. As he slowly approached, the surface of the statue seemed to shimmer in the light. He moved closer still, reaching out his hand and letting his fingertips brush across its hard surface.

The entire statue was encrusted with thousands of tiny gems. Even through the haze of his headache Luca grasped the significance of what he was seeing and for a long moment, just let his hand linger on the cool brittleness of the stones. As he moved the lighter in front of the statue’s eyes, two huge diamonds danced and flashed before him.

Finally he tore his gaze away, looking further down the corridor. He could see other alcoves set back from the tunnel. In the closest, another statue was shining in the darkness. How many more were there? And what other treasures were to be found, sealed away in this vault?

A sense of wonderment spread over him. Surely this was what the fortune hunters had been searching for all those years – the hidden treasure that the professor had said was just a myth.

Studded into the plinth of the statue were long lines of metal nuggets, each no bigger than a human finger. There were hundreds of them. He picked one up at random, turning it over in his hand. The metal was coarse and dull, and at one end he could see a circular mark had been branded into it, with eight points merging into a central triangle.

He had seen that mark before – in the thangka Jack had given him. It was the exact same symbol the priest had held in his open hand.

Running his own hand over the studded surface, Luca finally understood what these were. They were seals, used to brand letters with the official mark of Geltang. They didn’t look valuable, but they would at last be some kind of tangible proof that the place actually existed. Plucking one from the lowest part of the plinth, he slipped it into his pocket.

As Luca looked up again and into the white diamonds of the statue’s eyes, he heard a loud groaning. He froze. The sound was so close, hidden somewhere just beyond the statue.

Then it came again.

Waving the lighter from side to side, Luca tried to peer further into the darkness. The flame blew sideways, struggling to stay lit.

‘Who’s there?’

Nothing.

‘Answer me!’

He shuffled forward, passing round the front of the statue. The alcove opened up into a dark well and on the far side was the grey profile of a human figure, its outline vague against the stone wall. Luca stopped dead, feeling his insides turn to water.

The figure was contorted into the lotus position, head bent low, chin almost touching its chest. The legs were bent across each other and hands folded back, palms facing upwards. Tight leather straps ran right around its body, crisscrossing over the thighs then back across the shoulders, forcing it to remain unnaturally rigid.

‘Holy shit,’ Luca breathed.