Black Buddha by Richard Waters

Author:Richard Waters [Waters, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-05-16T22:00:00+00:00

Outside a monk in a brown tunic was praying beside a woman, beside herself on the stone floor. There were other women too, less prone but also wiping away tears. ‘More theatrics?’ I said to Lou,

‘Nah. She’s in mourning for her kid.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Cos I speak Lao, cos the priest is mumbling an exorcism to keep the Blackheart away. Afterwards she’ll go to a baci ceremony where they bind the various parts of her soul together so it doesn’t stray like her son’s.’

Something about the woman’s eyes still haunts me; panic mixed with utter sadness, as if perhaps she might not be able to breathe without her child beside her. ‘What happened to the child?’

‘Kid got taken, it’s been happening in the mountains from time to time.’

‘People traffikers?’

Lou shook his head, ‘Nah, bit stranger than that. Dragons.’

My jaw was hanging open. Incense smoke wafted by, a withered crone patted me affectionately on the arm, her mouth a mess of black stumps. Surrounded by the low moan of the monks, the tinkle of bells outside and whine of the carnivalesque xylophone, none of it seemed real.

‘And what do you think?’

‘About dragons? Horseshit… about as real as your Loch Ness monster. Still, no smoke without fire, right?’

‘Indulge me.’

‘Ah locals disappearing, people claiming to see things at night.’

Wasn’t the cult King associated with Carabas something to do with kids being taken from their villages and turned? ‘What have they seen?’ I asked.

‘Sure say “what” a lot don’t you? Journalists don’t know how to have a conversation - everything turns into an interrogation, huh? They allege they saw creatures, whatever that means, around a place called Black Dragon Mountain. It’s a coupla hundred clicks north of here.’

I must have looked pretty interested as he swiftly wagged a cynical finger at me, ‘Listen, the jungle’s full of stories and opium-induced hallucinations, you don’t take these things seriously – especially not from a bunch of horseshit crocked up Hmong or Akha tribesmen who’ve been smoking all day.’

‘You say horseshit a lot.’

His face cracked into a shabby grin. ‘This is true. Excuse me.’ He said joining the Laotians clustered around the burnished Bhudda. I watched him pin a rotten thousand kip note to the money tree then light a candle.

While he was gone I experienced something oddly comforting; the smell of incense, the soft murmuring of the monks and dark gold walls seemed to fill me with a sense of peace and in a very real sense, I felt as if Skip was hovering close beside me and watching my back. It was gone as quickly as it had come.

‘Sure beats the hell out of a hundred Hail Marys,’ Lou said, breaking my thoughts.

On the outskirts of the temple we stopped by a man beneath a huge banyan tree, about him a dozen cages containing sparrows. My companion bought two, one for each of us. ‘Instead of that cigarette I owe you,’ he smiled and passed me a cage, ‘Go ahead and let her go. It builds merit for the next life.

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