Free The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison

broken open.”
    â€œTo get at what it held.”
    â€œPresumably.”
    Shan considered the woman. In Chinese bureaucracies, there was a gray line between humanitarian service to the struggling colonies and outright exile. “But can you be so sure of the cause? Perhaps he died in a fall and later, for unrelated reasons, his head was removed.”
    â€œUnrelated reasons? The heart was still pumping when the head was severed. Otherwise there would have been much more blood in the body.”
    Shan sighed. “With what, then? An axe?”
    â€œSomething heavy. And razor-sharp.”
    â€œA rock, possibly?”
    Dr. Sung responded with a peevish frown and yawned. “Sure. A rock as sharp as a scalpel. It wasn’t a single blow. But no more than three, I’d say.”
    â€œWas he conscious?”
    â€œAt the time of death he was unconscious.”
    â€œSurely you cannot know, without the head.”
    â€œHis clothes,” Dr. Sung said. “There was almost no blood on his clothes. No skin or hair under the nails. No scratches. There was no struggle. His body was laid out so the blood would drain away from it. Face up. We extracted soil and mineral particles from the back of his sweater. Only the back.”
    â€œBut it’s just a theory, that he was unconscious.”
    â€œAnd your theory, Comrade? That he died by falling on a rock and someone who collected heads happened along?”
    â€œThis is Tibet. There is an entire social class dedicated to cutting up bodies for disposal. Perhaps a
ragyapa
happened along and began the rite for sky burial, then was interrupted.”
    â€œBy what?”
    â€œI don’t know. The birds.”
    â€œThey don’t fly at night,” she grumbled. “And I’ve never seen a vulture big enough to carry a skull away.” She pulled a paper from the clipboard. “You must be the fool who sent me this,” she said. It was the accident report form, ready for her signature.
    â€œThe colonel would feel better if you just signed it.”
    â€œI don’t work for the colonel.”
    â€œI told him that.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œIt’s a subtle point for a man like the colonel.”
    Sung threw him one last glare, nearly a snarl, then silently ripped the form in half. “How’s this for subtle?” She tossed the pieces on the naked corpse and marched out of the room.
    Â 
    Jilin the murderer was obviously invigorated by his new status as the leading worker of the 404th. He loomed like a giant at the front of the column, slamming his sledgehammer into the boulders, pausing occasionally to turn with a gloating expression toward the knots of Tibetan prisoners seated on the slope below. Shan studied the others, a dozen Chinese and Moslem Uyghurs not usually seen on the road crews. Zhong had sent the kitchen staff to the South Claw.
    Shan found Choje, sitting lotus fashion, his eyes closed, in the center of a ring of monks near the top. Their idea was to protect Choje when the guards eventually moved in. It only meant that the guards would be all the more furious when they eventually reached him.
    But the guards sat around the trucks, smoking and drinking tea brewed over an open wood fire. They were not watching the prisoners. They were watching the road from the valley.
    Jilin’s jubilance faded when he saw Shan. “They say you’re a trusty now,” he said bitterly, punctuating the sentence with a slam of the hammer.
    â€œJust a few days. I’ll be back.”
    â€œYou’re missing everything. Triple rations if you work. Damned locusts gonna get their wings broken. Stable gonna be full. We’ll be heroes.” Locusts. It was a label of contempt for the Tibetan natives. For the droning sound of their mantras.
    Shan studied the four small cairns that had been raised to mark where the body had been found. He slowly walked around the site, sketching it in his notebook.
    Sung