'Behenti! Behenti!' Michael wobbled around him, skipping one foot on the ground to keep his balance and skinning the back of his calf on the serrated edge of one pedal. An old man with a burned-down cigarette between his lips and a strange, lopsided turban tried to step into Michael's path and stop him. Strident voices chattered and argued, proffering food and fruit and shoes and 'guaranteed ancient' root carvings. The air was fragrant with chili and rice and with the crackling fat of babi guling, the Balinese roast suckling pig. The night market was filled with distorted rock 'n' roll blaring from rickety hooked-up speakers, and the rock 'n' roll clashed with the jingling of ceng-ceng cymbals and the beating of kendang drums. He cycled on, towards the street called Jalan Mahabhar-ata. Only somebody sensitive to the magic that awoke in the city of Denpasar every time the sun sank, only somebody who could recognize the preoccupied expression of a child who had been trained in the spiritual disciplines of Yama - only somebody like that would know where Michael was going, and why.

He could have been any local boy cycling through the night market on any kind of errand. 'Aduh! Terlalu mahal! Tidak, say a tidak mau membel-inya!' Michael jangled his bell and the women moved out of the way, still arguing. Two women were standing in his way now, arguing over the price of jackfruit. For the boy had tousled hair so blond it was almost white, while his eyes were dark brown and slightly slanted, and there was a curve to his nose and a softness about his mouth that betrayed his mother's Balinese blood. An occasional American would glance at him, especially one who remembered the half-caste heritage of Vietnam, but then he would look away almost at once.

Scarcely anybody took notice of the slight, thin-wristed boy with the old-fashioned bicycle. Sometimes he had to half-lift the bicycle onto his left shoulder to get around crates of chickens, bales of batik and baskets of snake-skinned salak fruit. Occasionally people would move out of the way for him, but more often he was forced to hop down from the saddle that was far too high for him and manhandle the bicycle through the crowds like a young cowboy trying to wrestle an obstinate steer. Whenever Michael found himself obstructed by early evening diners clustered around the warong stands with their white china bowls of fried noodles, he furiously jangled his bell. It was the monsoon season, hot and cloudy, and there were no stars. He steered his antiquated Rudge between the shuffling crowds of tourists and shoppers, between the jumbled arrangement of stalls lit with hundreds and hundreds of glass-funnelled gaslights. Death Trance Graham Masterton PROLOGUE Bali, 1981 It was just after eight o'clock in the evening when Michael came cycling through the night market.

Death Trance by Graham Masterton