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 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 swivelled and its ferocious teeth 
snapped; it let out a coarse roar of fury that made Michael's hair prickle with fear. The 
pedanda screamed: it was the first time Michael had ever heard a grown man scream. And 
then the mask stretched open its painted jaws and tore off the priest's head, exposing 
for one terrible, naked second the bloody tube of his trachea.
  Michael turned and ran. He burst through thepaduraksa gate, sped across the outer 
courtyard and back to the bronze doorway where the leyaks were waiting. His lungs 
shrieked for air; his mind was bursting with terror. But he dragged back the gate and ran 
out into the street, and there were no leyaks there now, only gas lamps and fruit stalls 
and boys on mopeds. And then he was running more slowly, and then he was walking, and as 
he reached the corner by the night market, he realized that he was out of the death 
trance and that, suddenly, it was all over.
  He walked for a long time beside the river, where the market lights were reflected. He 
passed fortune-telling stands, where mynah birds would pick out magic sticks to predict a 
customer's future. He passed warong stands, where sweating men were stirring up nasi 
goreng, rice with chili and beef slices. And in his mind's eye the mask of Rangda still 
swivelled her eyes and roared and bit at the high priest's head, and still the leyaks 
followed him, their eyes glowing.
  Tears ran down Michael's cheeks. He called for his father, but of course his father did 
not answer. Michael was a priest now, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? 
His only guide and teacher had been supernaturally savaged to death by Rangda; and 
Rangda's acolytes would probably pursue him day and night to take their revenge on him 
too.
  He prayed as he walked, but his prayers sounded futile in his mind. They were drowned 
by rock 'n' roll and the blurting of mopeds. It was only when he reached the corner of 
Jalan Gajahmada that he realized he had left his precious bicycle behind.
  
  
  CHAPTER ONE
  
  Memphis, Tennessee, 1984
  'Well, I believe that Elvis is still alive, that's my opinion. I believe that Elvis was 
sick right up to here with all those fans; sick right up to here of havin' no privacy; 
sick right up to here of all those middle-aged broads with the upswept eyeglasses 
shriekin' and droolin' and high-flyin' they ste-pins at him; sick right up to here of 
belongin' to the public instead of his own self and bein' constantly razzed for growin' 
himself a good-sized belly when tell me what man of forty-two don't, it's a man's right. 
So he fakes his death, you got me? and sneaks out of Graceland in the back of a laundry 
truck or whatever.'
  The sweat-crowned cab driver turned around in his seat and regarded Randolph at 
considerable length, one hairy wrist dangling on top of the steering wheel. 'You just 
remember where you heard it, my friend, when this white-bearded old man rolls back into 
Memphis one day, fat and happy, and says, "You all recollect who I am? My name's Elvis 
the Pelvis Presley, and while you been showerin' my tomb with tears, I been fishin' and 
drinkin' and havin' an excellent time and thinkin' what suckers you all are."'
  Randolph pointed towards the road ahead with a flat-handed chopping gesture. 'Do you 
mind keeping your eyes on the road? Elvis may have cheated death but you and I may not be 
quite so lucky.'
  The cab driver turned back just in time to swerve his cab away from a huge tractor 
trailer that had suddenly decided to change lanes without making a signal. As the cabbie 
swerved, he was given a peremptory two-tone blast on the horn from a Lincoln limousine 
crowded with Baptist priests.