Thirty-Three Teeth

by Colin Cotterill

  When he finally arrived at something solid, it proved to be no more than the step on the far side. He remembered the geography of the Viet Cong cave networks and wondered whether this was a pivot room. If it were, there would be tunnels leading off in each direction. Matters would become even more confusing if he had too many alternatives, so he didn’t bother to find out. He continued going straight. He climbed the far step and set off again into the tunnel. But things soon went horribly wrong.

  Late the previous year, after rescuing his neighbors from their ruined house, Siri had been hospitalized until the masonry dust could be cleared from his lungs. Although the dust was eventually flushed out, the air didn’t ever return with the same enthusiasm. Consequently, the doctor started to find himself short of breath at the worst possible times. But none of those times had been as inopportune as now.

  The further he moved from the only obvious source of oxygen, the deeper he had to trawl for air. He knew he had to concentrate on his breathing. The attack of the spiderweb had taken a lot out of him and he was now in danger of blacking out. If he lost consciousness, this whole horrible ordeal would have been a waste of time.

  He stopped, lay down on the ground where the richer air would still be, and gently meditated himself into a more relaxed state. He ignored the slithering and crawling around his head, and concentrated on replenishing his energy.

  This was when he began to hear, or believed he could hear, sounds. They were muffled, far off, and could, for all he knew, have been coming from above the tunnels rather than within them. But this was late at night in Vientiane. There wouldn’t be much activity in the streets. He listened intently.

  At first he didn’t recognize it. The noise was sporadic and muted like a bee in a tin can. He wasn’t able to identify it as either natural or man-made. But the longer he listened, the more obvious it became to him that the sound was getting louder. If it was in the tunnels, it could mean only one thing. It was coming toward him.

  He told himself not to panic, reminded himself he had the element of surprise. But surprise on whom or on what? Some surprise it would be, with him flat out in the middle of a narrow passage. And what if there were no connection between this noisemaker and Dtui’s disappearance? Was he really considering laying into some stranger with an iron bar just because he was scared out of his wits?

  Yes.

  “Don’t panic,” he told himself. He breathed. He lay still. He thought calm thoughts, and the sounds got louder—not a buzz now, but a growl. Now and again the growl would rise to a howl, a human–animal high-pitched roar, and it came to him:

  This was the sound from his dream in Luang Prabang. This was the unseen danger that approached through the jungle, the sound that he was to listen for in the future, to avoid, to flee with every iota of strength he possessed. He shuddered, and his nerve endings tingled the length of his body.

  Still he focused. Still he breathed. No sort of attack or defense would be possible if he were unconscious. He devised a plan. When he had enough breath to carry it through, he would return to the room through which he’d just passed. There were corners there, perhaps other tunnels. These could give him a chance.

  Because of the natural deadening effect of the earthen walls, it wasn’t possible to tell just how far off the creature was. But from the steady increase in volume, it was evident that it was traveling at a rapid pace.

  Siri breathed. He concentrated. He heard other sounds. He heard footsteps, heavy shuffling steps, and, between the howls and grunts, a heavy wheezing breath like that of an old man with a hole in his windpipe. He heard a low steady dragging sound and a sniff. The tunnel was now carrying noise with a frightening clarity.

  It was time. Siri got to his feet and walked slowly back toward the last room. Since he’d entered the tunnel, he’d counted the distances in paces. It was forty back to the deep well. At thirty-eight, he’d stop and proceed carefully until he found the drop. But as he walked, the sounds grew even louder behind him. He was tempted to run, but he knew the limitations of his lungs.

  Then, one new sound made him stop completely. It was brief but unmistakable: it was the sob of a woman. He listened for a repeat of it, but heard nothing but the snarls and ever-loud howling. Could it have been…?

  He reached the end of his count and began to tread carefully, bent over using his iron as a walking stick. The step was further than he’d calculated: annoyingly further. By the time he finally reached it, his breathing was strained again, but there was no chance to rest. He stepped carelessly down into the pit and crunched some of the debris under his foot.

  The sounds behind him immediately stopped, and he froze in position. There was the standoff: Siri fighting for breath, half up, half down, not daring to make another sound. And there was the dilemma: was the creature also frozen, listening for other sounds, or was it already running silently in his direction? If the latter were true, it could be on him at any second.

  He looked back over his shoulder, fearing the worst.

  “Breathe, Siri.”

  The view there should have been the same black tar he’d stared into since he arrived. He shouldn’t have been able to see a thing, but for some reason, deep, deep at the end of his tunnel, there was a gray speck. It hadn’t been there when he’d walked in that direction a while earlier.

  It hadn’t occurred to him for a second that the creature might need artificial light. Something had always made him believe it could find its way through the maze in darkness, using its instincts. But if it were part human, part Mr. Seua, perhaps it needed to use a lamp to see its way. Perhaps the distant grayness was the reflection from that light source. And perhaps that could be his one chance.

  There came an almighty howl that echoed along the walls and passed Siri in a gust. The creature was on the move again, and Siri could indeed see that the gray shadow shimmered in time with the footsteps. He sighed with temporary relief.

  Once again he waded through the matter in the pit, skating his shoes so as not to make undue sound. He skirted the perimeter of the room on one side, tapping the wall with his iron. He passed two corners. He found no other exit. He arrived at the opposite tunnel with time running out and inspected the other side of the room with new urgency. His premise was mistaken. The room had one entrance and one exit and no alternatives. His only hope was the pit.

  Light, like a very distant sunrise, was beginning to filter down the tunnel. With a lamp, Seua would see him soon enough if he stayed in the room. But the creature might not think to look down below the lip of the step. Siri carefully cleared a space by the aperture through which the creature would arrive. He was a little off to the right, so he wouldn’t be trodden on when it stepped down. He would have very little time to act.

  There were two possibilities. If the creature’s destination lay beyond this room, he would stay hidden and let it go. If its goal were the room itself, he wouldn’t know until it had stepped down to where he was. He would eventually be discovered. But there might just be a few seconds in which to attack the creature, to spring at it from behind and hit it with the iron bar.

  He knew he wouldn’t be allowed more than one thwack, so he would have to be deadly accurate. It would need every last gram of Siri’s strength. So he lay down against the step, practiced his meditation, and slowed his heartbeat to gather his resources for that one attack. And as more light filtered into the room, he could make out the carcasses of small creatures in varying stages of decay a foot deep all around him.

  “Breathe, Siri.”

  Events that until that moment had been happening so fast, suddenly slowed as if time were stalling. The tunnel must have been longer than Siri had anticipated. The approaching sounds continued but the doctor felt as if he’d been lying there for an age. He had the opportunity to think about Yeh Ming and wondered why the old sage had failed to send warnings of this danger.

  If ever his temple—he, Siri—were under threat, it was now. A terrible feeling of guilt came over Siri. D
espite all the careful planning that had gone into his choice as host to the grand old shaman, he’d let him down. He’d knowingly put himself into a life-threatening sit—

  Suddenly the creature was there. The beam of a flashlight dazzled directly into the room from just behind the step. From where he lay squashed tight against the dirt wall, Siri couldn’t see who was holding it, but the sound of snarling was almost directly above him. Only a wedge of black shadow kept the doctor from sight.

  His heart beat so loudly, he felt sure it could be heard. He breathed silently to a rhythm he’d set himself and gripped the iron bar tightly in his fist.

  What happened next wouldn’t be fully explained for a very long time. There were two halves to the mystery—one to baffle his hearing, one his sight—that wouldn’t ever completely fit together. The sounds came first.

  They began with footsteps shifting away from the step and the continued sound of dragging. There was one final howl. Then, from a point way beyond, came three incongruous sounds one after the other. First was the clucking of a chicken. Unlike all the other sounds, it didn’t resonate around the room.

  There followed two heavy thumps and a loud crack.

  Finally came the scream of a woman.

  Then there was silence.

  When he heard the scream, Siri abandoned all caution and clambered noisily to his hands and knees. But before he could hoist himself into a position to see over the step, the light from the flashlight went out.

  It was a darkness more profound and a silence more total than he’d ever encountered in his life, because it followed directly on the heels of chaos. He had no idea what he’d just heard or what to expect. He couldn’t get the eerie scream from his mind.

  “Dtui?” he shouted.

  His voice exploded in the new silence like thunder.

  “Dtui? Is that you?….….…. It’s Siri.”

  There was no reply.

  If the creature were there in that blackness, Siri was now exposed. But there was no calling back his voice. There was no turning around. Something awful had just happened, and he needed to know what it was.

  He climbed the step and shuffled forward, expecting his feet to find evidence of some horrific scene. His left foot kicked against something that rolled away. He knew it had to be the flashlight. He took a step forward and fumbled around in front of him on the packed earth. But his hand came to rest in something warm and wet and sticky like molasses.

  He pulled away and took as deep a breath as he could. He knew what he’d found. But this was no time to become squeamish. He continued to sweep his palms back and forth until he made contact with the flashlight. He grabbed it, located the switch and, with his heart in his mouth, clicked it on.

  Nothing happened.

  “Please, Buddha, don’t say the bulb’s gone.”

  He tapped the flashlight and shook it and tried the switch again.

  Still nothing.

  From a little way ahead of him, no more than a yard, there came a breath. He rattled the battery frantically, shook the flashlight again, smacked it harder against his palm.

  Another breath came from the dark.

  He took one breath of his own, concentrated, screwed the head of the flashlight tight, and tried the switch one more time.

  The tunnel lit up like a theater and, looking around him upon its stage, he saw the most impossible, the most extraordinary scene.

  The Man Who Ripped Off His Own Head

  Dtui awoke face-down. The scent of Breeze laundry detergent filled her nostrils. Her other senses were slower to come around. A fluffy white kitten lay some two feet from her head. It had no visible legs or face.

  She couldn’t feel her own tongue in her mouth, so she knew the medication was strong. She didn’t want to begin to imagine what pain it was covering or what parts she might be missing. She just basked for a minute or two in the state of being alive.

  The side of her face felt flat against the pillow, as if it had been there for an eternity. But no amount of willpower would convince her head to change its position. So she looked sideways at the familiar room through eyes gummy with the emissions of sleep.

  There was nothing to distinguish one of Mahosot’s private rooms from another. They all had the same Wattay blue walls, one traditional Lao print of an elephant, a year-old Thai plowing calendar, and a window too high up to see out of. She’d spent many hours in these rooms before her morgue career, but never in a bed. She felt a little like royalty—very sore, immobile royalty.

  The kitten stirred. Growing out of its bottom were a small nose, a mouth, and two very green eyes that seemed to take some time to realize Dtui was staring back.

  “Dtui?”

  “Hello.”

  She sounded like a crocodile.

  Siri was truly delighted. His neck was stiff from falling asleep during his watch again, but he clapped his hands and touched her numb cheek with the tips of his fingers. His smile made her feel important.

  “Well, it’s about time,” he said. “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t.”

  Siri reached down below the sheet.

  “Hey. What are you doing down there?”

  She tried to smile but dribbled instead. Siri retrieved her arm and took her pulse.

  “You have no more secrets from me, I’m afraid, Nurse Dtui.”

  Pleased with the pulse count, he took a tissue from the roll and wiped her mouth and eyes.

  “Why am I face-down?”

  “Most of your wounds are on your back. Do you remember what happened?”

  In fact she did. Most of it remained clear in her mind, although she would have preferred otherwise.

  “I was dragged, and….”

  “And beaten.”

  “Dr. Siri?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did he…mess with me?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “That’s good.”

  She may have managed a smile. Siri may still have been talking. But she was soon unconscious again.

  She swooned back into the room several more times that day. On one occasion, a big grinning Mr. Geung was leaning over her, encouraging her to stay awake, saying something about disinfectant prices.

  On another, she may have been entertaining a flock of white-uniformed nursing students.

  One more time, Civilai sat reading a report, making pencil notes in the margins.

  The last time, it was dark but for a covered lamp on the table beside her. Siri slept in the corner of the room on an unlikely hospital reclining deck chair. She’d used up all her sleep, so had nothing to occupy her time other than reliving her demon. Now was the moment when she could either box him away in a dusty corner of her psyche and let him rattle from time to time, or exorcise him and let herself get on with life.

  The night ticked on painfully slowly. The doctor slept with a crafty smile on his lips. She wondered what moment he was reliving in his dream, what happy time was revisiting him from the past. But she needed him awake.

  “Dr. Siri. Dr. Siri.”

  The poor man was disoriented. He’d had a full day at the morgue: an accidental double shooting at the army training ground. Half-awake, he remembered where he was, hurried over to Dtui and took her wrist.

  “You’re doing very well,” he said, swaying slightly.

  “Will I live?”

  “A lot longer than me. You really are an amazingly resilient young thing.”

  “Siri, what’s happened to my mom?”

  He blushed. “Ah, yes. That.”

  “Doc?”

  “Well, she’s moved in with me.”

  “You don’t waste any time, do you? Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine now. She’s very relieved that you pulled through.”

  “How bad was I?”

  “The first three days, we weren’t sure you’d make it.”

  “Damn.”

  “You’d lost a lot of blood.”

  “I’ve been here longer than t
hree days?”

  “Dtui, it’s April 10th. You’ve been here well over three weeks. It’s almost Lao New Year.”

  “God, how am I ever going to afford…? I can’t pay for all this and ma, and….”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “No. Don’t worry about it. You wouldn’t believe how well things have worked out on that front. I’ll tell you all about it later. The bills are taken care of.”

  Siri spent some time looking at Dtui’s wounds and doing a few basic tests.

  “Doc, I’m sorry I woke you up. I wanted to talk about it.”

  “We will.”

  “No, I mean now. I need to verbalize it. I really think the sooner I get it all out of my system, the better.”

  “It could be quite draining. Are you sure you’re strong enough?”

  “I’m wide awake and pumping.”

  “Then talk away. I can’t tell you how much I’ve been looking forward to solving this last little mystery. It’s been driving me nutty.”

  He pulled over the straight-back chair from the desk and sat beside her with his hand on hers.

  “Uncle Civilai told me about the tunnels.”

  “What made you think of looking underground?”

  “There’s this old lady at the slum. People call her a witch ’cause she knows all about these old traditions and uses herbal potions. I went to ask her about the weretiger. She told me about the caves and the holes down into the other world. As no witnesses had come forward to say they’d seen the creature, it seemed logical that it was in hiding. But there aren’t that many places above ground you can hide in a city like Vientiane.

  “I didn’t plan to go down there and be some Wonder Woman character, honestly I didn’t. I hate confined spaces. Even our room at the shanty gives me the willies. I just went down to take a look, really. I didn’t have any evidence, you see? I had nothing to prove he was down there. So I went to see if it was likely, or even possible. I opened the slab and went down to the bottom of the ladder and flashed my light down the tunnel. I called out, ‘Anyone down here?’