Chapter One - Richard Lewis

Chapter 8
On the way to pick up his uncle for the evening meeting, Nol first stopped for
Sudana and Timon, waiting at the salon that Sudana's wife owned. She sometimes
grudgingly gave Nol a free haircut, but he hadn't asked for one in a while, didn't like how
she dug into his scalp with the comb that last time. Damn painful, but he just sat there,
refusing to give her the satisfaction of wincing, and so she dug harder yet.
Nol turned onto the narrow lane that looped past the pura dalem. Durga's death
temple stood in its own lonely space on the edge of the rice fields, wild grass separating it
from the manicured paddies. No streetlamps illuminated this curve of blacktop. The
shaggy branches of the giant banyan tree draped over the very same burial ground where,
Uncle Dharma said in that big rumbling whisper of his, Luhde Srikandi had left her
mutilated victims.
Beyond the banyan was the sunken natural pond that had been there since time
before memory. No crystal waters, no blessed spring, but a scummy stagnant pool of dark
ground water, wads of algae floating on the surface. A cement post and rail circled the
pond. It was said that that witches crept here on the dark night of the new moon to steal a
bottleful from which to make their own unholy waters.
Nol dropped to second gear and slowed. "Remember when we were boys, how we
used to dare each other to jump into that pool?"
"We did a lot of dumb things," Timon said, "but we weren't idiots."
"I never told you this," Nol said, "but I once took a piece of bamboo and felt for
bottom."
"And?" Timon said, interested despite himself.
"I felt something grab it," Nol said.
There was a reflective silence and then Sudana said, "It could have just been the
mud bottom," but he didn't sound entirely convinced.
Nol nudged the accelerator, and the headlights swung clear of the temple. Timon
said, "I hear they're having a big cockfight at Sanur. Maybe you can recoup some of the
100 million you lost."
"Fifty," Nol said automatically. Then, "How do you know?"
An embarrassed silence rose from the back seat. "Sudana, you promised you
wouldn't tell anyone," Nol snapped.
"I only told Timon."
"That's like telling the whole village!"
"I haven't told a person," Timon said.
"Your wife?"
Silence.
Nol groaned. "That means Suti's going to find out."
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