Grahem Masterton
Death Trance
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  PROLOGUE
  
  Ball, 1981
  It was just after eight o'clock in the evening when Michael came cycling through the 
night market.
  He steered his antiquated Rudge between the shuffling crowds of tourists and shoppers, 
between the jumbled arrangement of stalls lit with hundreds and hundreds of 
glass-funnelled gaslights. It was the monsoon season, hot and cloudy, and there were no 
stars.
  Whenever Michael found himself obstructed by early evening diners clustered around the 
warong stands with their white china bowls of fried noodles, he furiously jangled his 
bell. Occasionally people would move out of the way for him, but more often he was forced 
to hop down from the saddle that was far too high for him and manhandle the bicycle 
through the crowds like a young cowboy trying to wrestle an obstinate steer.
  Sometimes he had to half-lift the bicycle onto his left shoulder to get around crates 
of chickens, bales of batik and baskets of snake-skinned salak fruit.
  Scarcely anybody took notice of the slight, thin-wristed boy with the old-fashioned 
bicycle. An occasional American would glance at him, especially one who remembered the 
half-caste heritage of Vietnam, but then he would look away almost at once. For the boy 
had tousled hair so blond it was almost white, while his eyes were dark brown and 
slightly slanted, and there was a curve to his nose and a softness about his mouth that 
betrayed his mother's Balinese blood.
  Two women were standing in his way now, arguing over the price of jackfruit.
  'Aduh! Terlalu mahal! Tidak, say a tidak mau membel-inya!'
  Michael jangled his bell and the women moved out of the way, still arguing. He could 
have been any local boy cycling through the night market on any kind of errand. Only 
somebody sensitive to the magic that awoke in the city of Denpasar every time the sun 
sank, only somebody who could recognize the preoccupied expression of a child who had 
been trained in the spiritual disciplines of Yama - only somebody like that would know 
where Michael was going, and why.
  He cycled on, towards the street called Jalan Mahabhar-ata. The night market was filled 
with distorted rock 'n' roll blaring from rickety hooked-up speakers, and the rock 'n' 
roll clashed with the jingling of ceng-ceng cymbals and the beating of kendang drums. The 
air was fragrant with chili and rice and with the crackling fat of babi guling, the 
Balinese roast suckling pig. Strident voices chattered and argued, proffering food and 
fruit and shoes and 'guaranteed ancient' root carvings.
  An old man with a burned-down cigarette between his lips and a strange, lopsided turban 
tried to step into Michael's path and stop him. 'Behenti! Behenti!'
  Michael wobbled around him, skipping one foot on the ground to keep his balance and 
skinning the back of his calf on the serrated edge of one pedal.
  The man cried out hoarsely, 'You - puthi anak - white child! I've seen you before. I 
know where you go. You should beware of leyaks. You should be careful of whose advice you 
take. You - puthi anak! You should be careful who guides you!'
  Michael kept on cycling without looking around to see if the old man was following him, 
hoping that he wasn't. Nevertheless, he wasn't surprised or distressed. He had been 
warned from the very beginning that there were others who were sensitive to spirits and 
that many of these others would recognize him for what he was.
  It was usually the old who sniffed him out, those who had retained a nose for the 
subtle presence of Dewi and Dewa, the male and female deities whose spirits could still 
be heard whispering in the dead of night, whose movements still left the gentlest of 
eddies in the morning mists. Few young people had any interest in the spirit world now; 
they were more interested in Bruce Springsteen, in Prince, and in roaring up and down 
Jalan Gajamahda on their mopeds, whistling at American girls. The spiritual power of 
Denpasar was still potent, especially in the older parts of the city, but as far as the 
young were concerned, the ancient deities had long ago been outshone by red and yellow 
neon lights and by the garish posters advertising sexy films.
  Michael was uncertain of what the old man in the turban had been trying to tell him, 
but he remembered, as he often did, the words of his father: 'Be patient, for there is 
always an explanation for everything. And whatever happens, you always have your soul, 
and you will always have me.'
  'I shall never ever leave you,' his father had told him gently on the porch of their 
house at Sangeh village, with the monsoon rain dripping from the eaves and steam rising 
from the blue-green fields. 'No matter where I travel, no matter what happens to me - 
even if I die - I shall never leave you.'
  It had been raining this afternoon in Denpasar. It was November, the second month of 
the monsoon season, and the temperature was up to eighty-seven degrees. The city felt as 
if it had been wrapped in hot, wet towels. Michael's face was glossy with sweat and his 
white short-sleeved shirt clung to his narrow back. Around his waist he wore a scarlet 
saput, or temple scarf, that had once belonged to his father. On his feet he wore grubby 
Adidas running shoes. Apart from his bicycle, which had been given to him by Mr Henry at 
the American consulate, his only other concession to Western culture was a Casio digital 
wristwatch with a football game on it.
  When he reached Jalan Mahabharata, he dismounted. He wheeled his bicycle past a batik 
stall, where a young girl was sitting sewing by the light of a gas lamp. Her beauty was 
almost unearthly even though her hair was fastened back with the simplest of combs and 
she wore nothing more elaborate than a plain dress of white cotton. She raised her eyes 
as Michael passed. She may have recognized him, but she said nothing.
  Farther along the street, the stalls and warong stands of the night market gave way to 
rows of older houses: Dutch colonial frontages with secretive doors and shuttered 
windows, dark entrances with signs written in Indonesian, shops and dental surgeries. A 
stray dog tore at a thrown-away chicken carcass. Two young men with slicked-back hair sat 
astride their Yamaha mopeds, smoking and hooting and singing 'hey-hey rock 'n' roh' over 
and over again. Across the street, outside a derelict laundry, a girl in a tight red 
satin skirt waited for somebody, or nobody.
  The air along this part of the street was rank with the smell of cheap food and sewage 
and incense. Tourists avoided the area because it seemed so heavy and threatening. But 
Michael wheeled his bicycle through the garbage and the fallen frangipani leaves, calm 
and distant in his demeanour, and unafraid.
  There was nothing to fear in the world of men. It was only on the edge of the world of 
spirits that real fear began.