Shan lifted the statue, testing the weight. As with most such figures, the base was hollow, for the small slips of prayers and charms that were traditionally sealed inside when the statue was consecrated. He turned it over. In the center of the bronze plate on the bottom was a neat half-inch hole, recently drilled.
“They all come back like this,” Kypo whispered in a haunted tone. “I thought I could repair it before my mother saw. Like the others, the sacred papers are left inside but the same hole is made in each. People say something inside has been incubating, waiting all these years to hatch. People say Yama is sending out worms of death.”
The two-legged demon of Shogo town was communing with his gods, sitting on the altar he had built against the wall of an old shed that overlooked the trash pit. Gyalo was so drunk he did not seem to notice Shan as he lowered himself to sit before him. The former lama, perched on his altar beside a candle, swayed back and forth, gazing without focus into the darkness of the gully below, into which the remains of the old town gompa, once the largest in the county, had been bulldozed decades earlier.
At first Shan thought the low murmur arising from his lips might be a mantra, but then Gyalo belched and he recognized it as a bawdy drinking song favored by herdsmen.
Shan had returned to his stable home and searched in his second, hidden workshop to find another Yama statue, which he now placed in the circle of light cast by the candle by the altar. “Where is the home of the Lord of Death, grandfather?”
Gyalo started, then grew very still as he gazed at the pool of light. He had, Shan suspected, thought the deity that had materialized before him was speaking. With an oddly solemn air he filled one of his little altar bowls from a white porcelain jug and tossed it in the little god’s face. Gyalo had hung an old chart in his tavern the month before, doubtlessly from some long-extinct monastery school, with images, in descending order, of the hierarchy of existence, with bodhisattvas, living saints, at the top and something resembling a worm at the bottom. He had written his name under the worm. Devout monks strived to leap from human form to sainthood in one lifetime. Gyalo’s sacred goal, he had solemnly declared that night during a drinking bout, was to leap to the bottom of the chart in one lifetime.
Shan leaned into the light and repeated his question. Gyalo looked up, carefully poured some more of his baijui, the foul-smelling sorghum whiskey that was the staple hard liquor of China, drank half, then tossed the rest into Shan’s face. Shan, accustomed to such baptisms, wiped his cheeks and spoke in a level voice. “Nowhere in Tibet have I seen so many statues of Yama as here. There must have been a temple devoted to him.”
“The army has a missile base up the road. They say it can destroy all of India in half an hour. That’s our temple of death.”
“A temple of Yama, Gyalo. Uncle Shinje’s retreat.”
“I once dug out twenty fresh skulls after an explosion on Tumkot mountain. I have learned to eat flesh three times a week. I saw a cat eating a butterfly today. Everything in the shadow of the mother mountain is dedicated to the Lord of Death.” Gyalo turned the jug upside down, draining its last few drops into his bowl. “To the glorious chairman of the glorious republic,” he toasted with the raised cup. “You Chinese have taught us what life is really about.”
“When the Yama statues started disappearing, people started dying.”
“What kind of people?”
“A Chinese, an American, a Nepali.”
Gyalo shrugged, as if it were to be expected.
“A Tibetan was murdered too, near Tumkot village.”
Gyalo’s head slowly shifted upward, from the jug to Shan.
“Perhaps you knew Ama Apte’s uncle.” Shan did not miss the way Gyalo shuddered at the mention of the astrologer. “He took a bullet between the eyes.”
Gyalo suddenly grew very sober. “Two legs or four?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Four.”
The news disturbed the tavern keeper, as if he had known, and feared, the mule. “It’s something of a habit in that family,” he said dismissively. But Shan saw the worried glance he shot over his shoulder, into the night, toward Tumkot. “No one should worry about that one. He knows how to throw off a face.” But Gyalo was worried. Of all the people who had died, of all the hardships that had come to the town, and his life, the only thing Shan had ever seen worry him was a dead mule.
“No,” Shan said quietly, “Ama Apte and I burned juniper and spoke to him. He is a hungry ghost. He will be in pain, unable to move on, until he reconciles his death, which means understanding the other deaths.”
Shan recalled Jomo’s report that Gyalo wanted to know about the murders.
Gyalo leaned forward, exposing a steel incisor, so close Shan could smell his rancid breath. “What do you know of dead people?”
“Most of my friends,” Shan explained, “and all my family but one are dead people.”
Gyalo’s laughter came so abruptly it seemed he had exploded. Bits of rice and sputum shot onto Shan’s shirt. But as quickly as it came it was gone, replaced by more worry, as Gyalo searched the shadows, his gaze lingering for a moment on the door to the shed behind him. Shan had seen inside that door only once, had glimpsed stacks of old tools and rusted artifacts.
“Why would the town’s living demon be scared of a dead mule’s ghost?” Shan asked.
“You don’t know ghosts like I do,” Gyalo said in a near whisper. “Make light of him and you make light of Yama.”
“I am going to stop him,” Shan declared.
“Yama?”
“Yes.”
Gyalo’s grin returned. His drunken cackle was like that of an old rooster. “The Lord of Death never loses. I will look forward to his victory. I will carry your body to the next valley where there are some old ragyapa, and personally help to cut up your flesh for the birds.”
“Of all the people in town, you are the only one I can rely on, because I know your hate is genuine, and it is like a pure thing between us. An old lama taught me that only pure things are real. You will not contaminate it with a lie.”
Gyalo cast a crooked smile at Shan. “You are such a joy to hate, I admit it. A Chinese demon sent to torment me. The perfect neighbor.”
“But this time you have a problem, Rinpoche,” Shan said, using the term for revered teacher. “You can hate the gods or you can hate me. People say the old gods have let loose the worms of death. I am going to fight the gods. That makes us allies.”
Gyalo belched. “If it’s you versus the worms I’ll chose the worms every time.”
“Tell me where the old Yama temple was.”
Shan had seen the light that grew on Gyalo’s face before, in the eyes of demons painted on the walls of old temples. “You’ll never get past the flagpole,” the old Tibetan said.
Shan’s brow creased in confusion. Ama Apte had spoken of a flagpole, one of the places her mule liked to visit. “Then let me try and fail,” he ventured, still not grasping the warning in Gyalo’s words.
“The price for that particular information has already been set,” Gyalo spat. “One jug of sorghum.”
Shan gazed at him a moment as he pieced together the puzzle of his words, then with a small bow rose and slipped away toward the center of town.
Half an hour later, Gyalo’s information bought and paid for, he faded back into the darkness, pausing at the entrance to the rundown old farmhouse Gyalo called home. It had once been a sturdy structure, well kept for generations until abandoned when the gompa was destroyed. It was a stone’s throw away from the shed and Gyalo’s altar, where the former lama was now loudly singing one of his drinking songs to the ruins below.
A solitary butter lamp sputtered in one corner. The floor was littered with pots and dirt and kernels of dried cheese too hard even to interest the two stray dogs that slept on a soiled pallet in the corner. Though the tavern was one of the most successful businesses in Shogo, Gyalo still lived in poverty, because Tsipon owned the business, and the salary he paid the old Tibetan mostly went for alcohol. He glanced back in the direction of the shed where he had left Gyalo, then grabbed the ragged broom of barley straw by the door, herded the dogs outside and began sweeping. \\He worked quickly, refilling the chomay, the butter lamp by the pallet, folding the tattered blankets. He had almost finished when a peeved voice interrupted from the doorway.