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the cloth.’
    'It is Rangda, the Witch Widow, nobody else! The contemptible Rangda!’
    He was about to whip the cloth away when the pedanda lurched forward and snatched it out of his hand. Michael, caught off balance, fell back. But the cloth was dragged off the top of the mask all the same, just as the pedanda dropped before it.
    Michael gasped. The hideous mask was alive. Its eyes swiveled and its ferocious teeth snapped; it let out a coarse roar of fury that made Michael's hair prickle with fear. The pedanda screamed: it was the first time Michael had ever heard a grown man scream. And then the mask stretched open its painted jaws and tore off the priest's head, exposing for one terrible, naked second the bloody tube of his trachea.
    Michael turned and ran. He burst through the paduraksa gate, sped across the outer courtyard and back to the bronze doorway where the leyaks were waiting. His lungs shrieked for air; his mind was bursting with terror. But he dragged back the gate and ran out into the street, and there were no leyaks there now, only gas lamps and fruit stalls and boys on mopeds. And then he was running more slowly, and then he was walking, and as he reached the corner by the night market, he realized that he was out of the death trance and that, suddenly, it was all over.
    He walked for a long time beside the river, where the market lights were reflected. He passed fortune-telling stands, where mynah birds would pick out magic sticks to predict a customer's future. He passed warong stands, where sweating men were stirring up nasi goreng, rice with chili and beef slices. And in his mind's eye the mask of Rangda still swiveled her eyes and roared and bit at the high priest's head, and still the leyaks followed him, their eyes glowing.
    Tears ran down Michael's cheeks. He called for his father, but of course his father did not answer. Michael was a priest now, but what did that mean? What was he supposed to do? His only guide and teacher had been supernaturally savaged to death by Rangda; and Rangda's acolytes would probably pursue him day and night to take their revenge on him too.
    He prayed as he walked, but his prayers sounded futile in his mind. They were drowned by rock 'n' roll and the blurting of mopeds. It was only when he reached the corner of Jalan Gajahmada that he realized he had left his precious bicycle behind.

CHAPTER ONE
    Memphis, Tennessee, 1984
    'Well, I believe that Elvis is still alive, that's my opinion. I believe that Elvis was sick right up to here with all those fans; sick right up to here of havin' no privacy; sick right up to here of all those middle-aged broads with the upswept eyeglasses shriekin' and droolin' and high-flyin' they ste-pins at him; sick right up to here of belongin' to the public instead of his own self and bein' constantly razzed for growin' himself a good-sized belly when tell me what man of forty-two don't, it's a man's right. So he fakes his death, you got me? and sneaks out of Graceland in the back of a laundry truck or whatever.’
    The sweat-crowned cab driver turned around in his seat and regarded Randolph at considerable length, one hairy wrist dangling on top of the steering wheel. 'You just remember where you heard it, my friend, when this white-bearded old man rolls back into Memphis one day, fat and happy, and says, "You all recollect who I am? My name's Elvis the Pelvis Presley, and while you been showerin' my tomb with tears, I been fishin' and drinkin' and havin' an excellent time and thinkin' what suckers you all are."‘
    Randolph pointed towards the road ahead with a flat-handed chopping gesture. 'Do you mind keeping your eyes on the road? Elvis may have cheated death but you and I may not be quite so lucky.’
    The cab driver turned back just in time to swerve his cab away from a huge tractor trailer that had suddenly decided to change lanes without making a signal. As the cabbie swerved, he was given a peremptory two-tone blast on the horn from a