Path of the Dead

By Timothy Baker

Nestled on the foot of the sacred Seche La Mountain is the village of Dagzê, Tibet, China. The normally quiet streets are bustling with the steady stream of arrivals and preparations for the coming Festival of the Medicine King; a time of celebration, healing, and renewal. But a shadow is sweeping the world, a plaque of apocalyptic proportion: the dead are rising and devouring the living, and no place is safe where humanity thrives. As Dagzê burns, overtaken by the hungry undead, five people come together. Three have journeyed far, trucking in gifts for the festival: Lama Tenzin, an elder monk, there too, looking for an old friend; Gu-lang, the silent warrior nun, Tenzin’s protector; Cheung, a private in The People’s Army, an ordered driver and escort of the Lama. Two are citizens of the mountain: Ten-year-old Chodren Dawa, witness to his sister’s death and rising, and the brutal death of his parents; and Dorje Cetan, hermit monk of Seche La, Shaolin trained, lifetime seeker of Nirvana, dreamer of a dark portent, and haunted by the face of a girl. Together they fight their way out of Dagzê, driving up a treacherous mountainside trail to their only refuge—a long abandoned Buddhist hermitage clinging to a mist shrouded granite wall of Seche La. With the undead following and gathering at Eagle’s Nest gate, they barricade themselves inside their dead-end haven, and battle the beasts without and ones within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Bed Sheet Books
• Release date: Jan 19, 2020

Timothy Baker

Timothy Baker is a retired firefighter, martial arts instructor, and an aspiring, perspiring, horror writer. He has published several short stories in anthologies with Angelic Knight Press, a novel with Ragnarok Publications, and a trilogy of horror with Black Bed Sheet Books. His latest work is his short story, Cell of Curtains, in the recently released anthology, Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker's Nightbreed from Tor and edited by Del Howison and Joseph Nascisse.

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Path of the Dead

Timothy Baker

Path of the Dead

A Black Bed Sheet/Diverse Media Book

January 2020

Copyright © 2020 by Timothy Baker

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Nicholas Grabowsky

and copyright © 2020 Black Bed Sheet Books

The selections in this book are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN-10: 1-946874-20-5

ISBN-13: 978-1-946874-20-7

Path of the Dead

A Black Bed Sheet/Diverse Media Book

Antelope, CA

Also by Timothy Baker:

Monster Ink

Anthologies:

Midian Unmade: Tales of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed

Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous

Fifty Shades of Decay: Zombie Erotica

Chapter One

The dream had always been the same—the silent food market, the bustling faceless crowd, the chime, then her and the swell of unquenched love.

The monk usually awakened at the point of her appearance and the rising, disturbing emotion. He would sit up and fold his legs in, laying one hand atop the other in his lap, and let the disturbance go like a passing thundercloud. But this time the dream did not end there, instead turning from a pleasant reverie into a nightmare of foreboding shadow.

In his slumber, the monk tossed in his small bunk and moaned.

He walked in his bright orange Shaolin robe through a crowded, open food market in Zhengzhou City, a place he had visited only once in his youth, returning many times in his dreams. The bright sun made the colorful signs, streamers, and flags vivid as reality. Despite the milling people, there was only silence. He saw no faces; all were turned away or covered in shadow. He moved among the throng with fluid ease, neither touched nor jostled.

A wind chime sounded a clear ringing mid-tone. A small smile curved his closed lips, and he observed his breath. He turned to the sound as the chime rang again, finding the merchant booth from whence it came and stepped to it. The seafood vendor stood with his back to the monk, still and waiting. The chime hung above a display box filled with various sizes of belly-cut fish. Below its base, one long metal chime dangled alone, its brethren gone. The clapper swung without a breeze and tapped another bright tone.

The monk caressed the chime, making it sound again. He inhaled and caught the scent of a spring blooming mimosa. He turned and the faceless crowd split as if pushed apart by his searching gaze, gradually opening across the courtyard. The last two people parted like a stage curtain and there she was—beautiful, shining, and untouched by time. The monk’s heart leapt in his chest and his breath stopped. She picked up a ripe red apple, grasping it as if it were fragile, and held it to her nose. Her dark eyes closed as she took in the scent of the fruit and smiled, then she looked at him and time froze.

His mind reeled, and he felt himself falling into the dark well of her deep pupil-less eyes. Every earthly desire converged and swelled to the surface in that one look. Her tapered wide eyes, the petite perfect lines of her olive face, the sweet temptation of her red lips, shattered his peace with the body-tingling sensation of love, lust, and ravenous hunger. Ten thousand lives he would gladly live, sacrificing peace and return-ending Nirvana, to have her, to hear her voice, to feel her touch, to know her love, again, again, and ever again.

A shadow crept across the market, darkening the people and stilling them in place. The monk turned to the wind chime and the clapper swung by some invisible hand, hitting the lone chime, hard. Instead of the bright tone, a great Zen bell sounded, deep and foreboding. The merchant turned and tossed something into the box with an audible splat. A live squid, flattened and shining, slipped down the open-bellied fish, its tentacles squirming and grasping. The merchant’s hands were mottled, his fingers turned black and emaciated. The monk looked to the merchant’s hidden face and the hat brim started to lift. A warning lit his consciousness, and he turned away to find the girl.

The great bell sounded once more as she turned fully to face him, her raven hair lifting in a breeze, smile widening. She lifted her arm to offer the fruit, but a hand gripped her wrist, black and bone thin with ravaged, bruise colored talons for fingernails. A cacophony of mewling beasts filled the air.

Dark naked creatures turned to him with ashen faces and bulging crimson eyes, their lipless, tiny mouths opening to howl like hungry calves. Mange-like hair covered their thin necks and their empty, bloated bellies. Over-long arms swung as an ape’s, flailing about, beating and gripping their fellow beasts, pulling black flesh to their small mouths, trying and failing to feed.

The girl held her smile as the beasts descended on her, rending her clothes and skin with their claws. Demon mouths fell to her arms, neck, and naked breasts, ripping at her flesh, pulling it away and leaning their heads back to swallow. With necks too thin to allow food to pass, the beasts spat her flesh away and returned to bite again. She fell to her knees and a tangle of limbs and struggling monsters engulfed her.

The monk’s scream stuck in his throat. He tried to run to her but his legs felt of stone. The creatures turned on him, their heads cocking and shaking as hundreds of grasping arms reached out. He fell beneath their weight. Multiple mouths bit and sucked at his flesh. What light there remained above disappeared. In that instant, he knew what had befallen them. A realm above Hell had come to Earth, the home of the preta, the land of the hungry ghosts.

The giant bell resounded a third time, and the monk awoke to the cawing of crows just outside his mountain hut.

Despite the coolness of the pre-dawn morning, he was slick with sweat. He sat up and stood, walking across the packed earth floor to the nearby table and poured spring water from a pitcher into a large washbowl. He tossed his graying hair over his shoulder and lifted the water in cupped hands to cleanse the sweat away. He took a long drink and let it spill down the length of his beard. The cool water did nothing to wash away the darkness of the dream, nor the vision of her face disappearing beneath the swarming beasts.

Ignoring his usual morning ritual of meditative prayer and study, he set about filling a worn knapsack with bottled water and dried fruit. There was no debating the pros and cons of entering the life of man again. The leaf in fall makes no resolution when a breeze breaks it from its limb to float to the ground. And so it was for the monk.

The monk shed his tattered robe and pulled a dusty chest from beneath his cot. A bright orange and yellow robe lay folded beneath its lid. This he lay on his bed. From the bottom of the chest, he pulled a silk cloth-wrapped object, thick and long as a dagger, and placed it next to the robe. He stood and removed his bracelet from his wrist. Thumbing each bead as the bracelet rolled in his palm, his lips moved in a silent prayer. When he reached the frayed tassel, he slipped the prayer bracelet around his wrist and then unfolded the robe, shaking the top and bottom out lest there be any poisonous spiders within. He donned the baggy pants and top, adjusting it to fit his narrow frame, leaving his right shoulder uncovered.

He picked up the wrapped object and unfolded the cloth to reveal a sheathed blade, its handle and scabbard making a single blunted piece of bamboo. The monk ran a hand through his hair and scratched at his beard. A pull of the scabbard and he held the blade before him. The Jai Dao was not made as a weapon, in fact it was forbidden to use it as such; its blunted tip hinted to its use for chores and shaving. He ran his thumb across its dull edge, then slid it back into its sheath and slipped it securely into his robe belt. There was no time to shave.

The monk stepped from his mountain hut to the fading morning twilight. The crows took off from the nearby trees in a flurry of darting shadows. A hat of mist hid the mountain peak above and the air was still, caught between breaths. With no time to lose, he took up his walking staff that leaned outside the door, shouldered his knapsack, and set off down the fern canopied trail. An eagle passed low above and called to him. He answered in perfect mimicry.

The monk walked steadily, the beautiful girl’s face fading from his mind, while his concern rose for the village in the valley below and the unknown misfortune that he felt was about to befall it.

Dorje Cetan, the hermit monk of Seche La Mountain, took mindful note of his breath, felt each step kiss the earth, and did not look back.

Chapter Two

Near the foot of Seche La Mountain sat the thriving village of Dagzê, Tibet. While Dorje walked down from his hermit home, the sun took to the aquamarine sky and warmed the villagers, bringing smiles to their faces as they worked to clear areas and raise colorful tents on the outskirts. The star of the Medicine King would be rising in the east in two nights, marking the beginning of the Bathing Festival, drawing visitors from other nearby villages to cleanse and heal themselves in the clear waters of the large village-side stream.

Autumn had begun and the last warm days of the year melted the stores of mountain snow high above to swell the stream in clean, magical, healing water. Families would be gathering at the streamside, camping and bathing naked together during the days of the festival, soaking up the gift of the Medicine King until he left the sky a week later.

So the people worked without laboring, their joyful chatter rising with the smell of cooking momos, mutton, and butter tea permeating the air. Large reams of cloth and prayer flags of red, yellow, orange, and blue hung over the rock streets, the prayers caught by the wind and carried to the gods, blessing life and its thousands of incarnations.

But ten-year-old Chodren Dawa was not happy.

He sat upon a stone wall in the shadow of a giant, aged cypress tree, hiding his sullen look. A well-scuffed soccer ball lay cradled in his arms. He stared at his dangling feet, taking no notice of the colorful activity below.

The wall on which he sat lay far up a hill that overlooked the village. Behind him, further up, sat the flat-roofed house belonging to Papa Jinpa, called as such for he was the oldest of the village. The children loved him for his gentle generosity and partly because he had the only television in town. So high up the hill and so large was his dish antenna, it could be seen from the valley a half mile away.

A group of children milled around the door to Papa’s home, along with a couple of young men taking a break from their work and hiding from their parents. A Chinese soccer game was scheduled for broadcast and the children’s voices were loud with enthusiasm. A few spilled out of the door, parting for the passing of Jinpa and his occasionally strict cane. Beyond the children and his wooden porch he stopped, and spying Chodren, he hobbled down to the tree and the silent boy. He stood for a moment, surveying the village below, before he spoke.

Tell me, boy, he said in a voice fragile yet sturdy. What creature is it that walks on four legs in the morning, then at noon it walks upright on two, and as the stars appear in the sky, it walks about on three?

Chodren continued to stare at his feet and shrugged a shoulder. Jinpa tapped the boy on his back with his worn cane. Answer straight away, young man.

With a sigh, Chodren looked up into the branches of the tree. It is a man when he is a baby, crawling about on his hands and knees, then as a grown man he stands tall on his two legs, and when he becomes old he walks— He looked up at Jinpa with a forced grin, squinting at the bright sky. He becomes you.

Jinpa cackled a laugh. You are becoming a wise young man, Chodren, with a sharp tongue.

Chodren felt no insult. He looked back to the valley and began to turn the ball in his hands. They both fell silent. He stopped and stared at a smudged impression upon the football; a dirty, partial imprint of a foot with small, petite, toes lined along its edge. Chodren bit his quivering lip, forcing back a sob. It had taken him by surprise, this sudden grief, and he choked it back. If he let it out, released from its cage, he feared it would devour him like a raging tiger.

You think of your little sister, Jinpa said.

Chodren did not respond. Jinpa turned and sat next to him to face the other way. She was a fine football player, even so small she would kick the ball and it would fly into the air as if it had wings and go very far. She had great power, yes, in her legs and in her heart.

Chodren hugged the ball to his chest and laid his chin upon it. Jinpa rested his hands atop his cane and stared into the distance.

You are sad and miss her very much, Jinpa said. That is good. It shows how much you loved her. You were a good brother.

Chodren looked at Jinpa, tears and reproach in his eyes. No I wasn’t. I saw the viper, but I was too scared to warn her. It bit her, and I did nothing. He turned back and wiped his face with his arm. I want to find that snake and kill it. I want to kill all snakes.

Now, now, you can’t blame the snake. He is a snake because he hides in the grass and bites what he fears. It knows nothing more and can do no less. Jinpa placed his thin wrinkled hand upon Chodren’s shoulder. And it was no fault of yours, no more than it is my fault that the sun rises or that, in the night, I fart like a sick yak. Jinpa leaned a bit to lift a butt cheek and emitted the sound of a badly blown conch. "But for that I am completely responsible."

The boy let out a blubbering laugh and looked to Jinpa with a weak smile. Jinpa always knew how to make him laugh, and Chodren felt a bit lighter simply from his presence. But the ache in his heart was so powerful he felt he might live with it forever.

Papa? Chodren’s face turned serious. You are mighty old. Are you afraid of death?

Jinpa let out a raspy chuckle and flashed a beaming smile. Why no. I look forward to it. I am old and creak and ache when I move and look forward to my next life when I will be young and vibrant and can dance and flirt with the young girls again. Jinpa looked to the peak of Seche La. Chodren followed his gaze to the snow tipped point. Not far below it, a dot of buildings clung to the bare, vertical rock face.

Jinpa said, Or perhaps spend my life seeking release from this grinding wheel of life. He turned back and his eyes seemed far away. But right now, I think I would prefer the dancing and flirting.

The old man looked into Chodren’s eyes and Chodren didn’t return his smile, feeling dissatisfied with Jinpa’s answer. Jinpa’s smile faded and he sighed.

Death is ever with us all, my boy, and you can fight it and you can warn of its coming and even delay it, but you cannot stop it no more than you can single-handedly stay a giant boulder from plunging down the mountain. When it comes, and if you are good, which you are, and remain so, death will be compassionate and walk you to your next life as a friend would. He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped away the tears that had begun to dry on Chodren’s cheeks and returned the cloth to his pocket.

Perhaps you should take something she loved, or precious to you, to her resting place. Give it away with all your heart, freely. She would smile at that, would she not?

Yes, Chodren said, his mind turning. But what?

Perhaps it is as close to you as she is to your heart.

Chodren looked puzzled, and then his eyes widened. He lifted the football from his