"Death Trance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

The priest pressed his left hand against his deaf left ear and listened keenly with his right. 'They are. There must be leyaks close by. Leyaks prey on the dead as well as on the living. They capture their antakaransariras and drag them back to Rangda for torturing.'
'Even the dead can be tortured?'
'Rangda is the Queen of the Dead. She can put them through far more terrible agonies than they have ever suffered during their lifetimes.'
Michael turned and looked around the graveyard. He heard a rustling sound but it was only the creeper trailing against the shrines. Nonetheless, the pedanda clasped his wrist with fingers as bony as a hawk's and drew him back towards the graveyard gates.
'It is not wise to tempt the leyaks, especially since we are both in a death trance. Come, let us return to the temple.'
They left the graveyard and stepped out into Jalan Mahabnarata. The street was completely deserted, although some of the upstairs windows were lighted and there was the bonelike clacking of mah-jong tiles, and laughter. The pedanda glanced around and then took Michael's sleeve. 'Be quick. If the leyaks catch us in the open, they will kill us.'
They began to walk along the street as fast as they could without alerting hostile eyes. They passed two or three tourists and a fruit seller, all of whom seemed to be moving on a different time plane, moving so slowly that Michael could have snatched the durian fruit from the market woman's upraised hand without her realizing who had taken it. One of the tourists turned and frowned as if
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sensing their passing, but before he could collect his wits, they were gone.
They were no more than three hundred yards from the temple gates when the pedanda said, There. On the other side of the street.'
Michael glanced sideways and caught sight of a grey-faced man in a grey suit, with eyes that shone carnivorously orange. He looked like a zombie out of a horror movie, but he walked swiftly and athletically, keeping pace with them on the opposite sidewalk; as he reached the small side street called Jalan Suling, the Street of Flutes, he was joined by another grey-faced man. Their cheeks could have been smeared with human ashes; their eyes could have been glowing lamps from the night market.
Taster,' the pedanda insisted. Now they made no pretence of walking but ran towards the gates of the Puri Dalem as fast as they could. The priest held up his robes, and his sandals slapped on the bricks. Michael could have run much faster but he did not want to leave the old man behind. There were three or four leyaks following them now, and Michael glimpsed their glistening teeth.
They had almost reached the temple gates when three leyaks appeared in front of them. They were larger than Michael had ever imagined and their faces were like funeral masks. The pedanda gasped, 'Michael, the gates! Open the gates!'
Michael tried to dodge around the leyaks and reach the gates. One of the creatures snatched at his arm with a hand that felt like a steel claw. The nails dug into his skin but somehow he managed to twist away and cling to the heavy ring handle that would open up the temple. The leyak snatched at him again, viciously scratching his legs, but then Michael heaved the gate inwards and tumbled into the temple's outer courtyard.
The pedanda was not so lucky. The leyaks had jumped on him now; one of them had seized his left forearm in his jaws and was trying to pry the flesh from the bone. The other leyaks were ripping at his robes with their claws and
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already the simple white cotton was splashed with blood.
Michael screamed, 'No! No! Let him go!' but the leyaks snarled and bit at the old pedanda like wild dogs, their eyes flaring orange. Blood flew everywhere in a shower of hot droplets. The noise was horrendous: snarling and screeching and tearing. Michael heard muscles shred, sinews snap, bones break like dry branches. For a moment the pedanda was completely buried under the grey, hulking leyaks and Michael thought he would never see the old priest again.
But then, like a drowning man reaching for air, the pedanda extended one hand towards the temple. Michael desperately tried to grasp it, missed the first time but then managed to seize the pedanda's wrist.
'Barong Keket!' he shouted, although it was more of a war cry than an appeal to the sovereign of the forests, the archenemy of Rangda. 'Barong Keket!'
At the sound of the deity's name, the snarling leyaks raised their heads and glared at Michael with burning eyes. And as they raised their heads, Michael tugged at the pedanda'?, arm and managed to drag the old man into the safety of the temple courtyard. There were screams of rage and frustration from the leyaks, but none of them could walk on sacred ground. Their nails grated against the bronze doorway and they howled like wolves at bay, but they could come no further. Michael slammed the door and stood with his back to it, panting. The pedanda lay on the courtyard floor, his robes crimson with blood, gasping and shivering.
'We must leave this trance if we wish to survive,' he gasped. 'Quickly, Michael. Take me back to the inner courtyard.'
Michael helped the priest to his feet. He could feel the sticky wetness of blood, the sliminess of torn muscle. The pedanda~felt no pain because he was still deeply entranced, but there was no doubt that he was close to death. If Michael could not bring him out of the trance and take him to the hospital, the old priest would die within an
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hour. Breathing as deeply and as calmly as he could, Michael dragged the pedanda through the inner gate, the paduraksa, and back to the silken mats. The mask of Rangda was still there, covered by its cloth; the incense still smoked.
'You must recite . . . the sanghyang . . .' whispered the pedanda. 'You are a priest now . . . your word has all the influence of mine.'
Michael helped the priest to sit on his mat. The old man had once told him that these mats were the last remnants of the robes of the monkey general Hanuman. They had been brilliant turquoise-green once; now they were brown and faded with damp.
'O Sanghyang Widi, we ask your indulgence to leave this realm,' intoned Michael, trying to remember the words the pedanda had taught him. 'We ask to return to our mortal selves, three in one joined together, suksmasarira and stulasarira and antakaransarira. O Sanghyang Widi, guide us.'
There was silence in the temple. The incense smoke drifted and turned ceaselessly. Michael repeated the incantation and then added the special sacred blessing: 'Fragrant is the smoke of incense, the smoke that coils and coils upward, towards the home of the three divine ones.'
Then he closed his eyes, praying for the trance to end. But when he opened his eyes, he knew that he was still inside the world within worlds, that the leyaks were still scratching furiously against the doors of the temple and that he could still see the dead if they were to walk here.
The pedanda looked across at Michael with bloodshot eyes. His face was the colour of parchment. 'Something is wrong,' he whispered. 'There is great magic here, great evil.'
Michael pressed his hands together intently and prayed for Sanghyang Widi to guide them out of their death trance and back to the mortal world.
The pedanda whispered, 'It won't work, it isn't working. Something is wrong.' The little priest's blood was running
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across the stones of the inner courtyard, following the crevices between them like an Oriental puzzle.
Michael leaned forward intently. 'I am a priest now? You're sure of that?'
'You are a priest now.'
'Then why won't my words take us back?'
'Because there is a greater influence here than yours, some influence that is preventing you from taking us back.'
Michael looked around at the temple's neglected shrines, at the rustling leaves on the courtyard floor. The shrines were silent and dark, their meru roofs curved against the night sky. There was no malevolence in the shrines; they were no longer visited by the spirits for whom they had been built.
Then he turned to the mask of Rangda, covered by its cloth. He looked up at the pedanda and said, 'The mask. Do you think it is the mask?'
The mask is very sakti,' the pedanda whispered. 'But it should not prevent us from going back. Not unless . . .'
'Not unless what, PakT
'Not unless your spiritual abilities are posing a threat to Rangda. Not unless she believes that you may someday do her harm. In which case, she will not let us go.'
Michael hesitated for a moment. Then he reached forward and grasped the edge of the cloth that covered the face of Rangda. 'It's only a mask,' he said. 'You said that yourself when you took me to my first Barong play. It is evil and it gives off evil feelings, but it is only a mask.'
The pedanda said, 'No, Michael, do not remove the cloth.'
'It is Rangda, the Witch Widow, nobody else! The contemptible Rangda!'
He was about to whip the cloth away when the pedanda lurched forward and snatched it out of his hand. Michael, caught off balance, fell back. But the cloth was dragged off the top of the mask all the same, just as the pedanda dropped before it.
Michael gasped. The hideous mask was alive. Its eyes
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