Merkabah Rider: Tales of a High Planes Drifter Read online

  He was the last of the American enclave. Adon had seen to that. He had employed his powers to murder the San Francisco Essenes, destroying the Order’s foothold in America.

  Yet because of his master, he was one of the most accomplished Merkabah explorers of his age. In his time, he had immersed himself in the waters of eternity, had witnessed the thunderous ecstasy of God’s Chariot with all its fiery attendants, and had visited with the glorious ministers of the Holy Palaces.

  The fearsome angel Metatron barred him from the object of his journey in the end—denied him from attaining the ultimate audience with the Lord in the seventh heaven of Araboth. Whether it was due to his employment of ‘idolatrous’ artifacts or some failing in his own spiritual purification, he didn’t know for certain.

  He had come away from the path of glory a troubled failure, with only more questions. Though he had passed time among the purest of spirits and learned many unutterable mysteries, The Rider had still felt the pull of his mortal heart anchoring him to the earthly realm; he could still hear the lamentations of the innocent and the cackle of the demons that tormented and misguided them. He came to believe that perhaps he had been denied the climactic joining with the Divine because he had a task to perform on earth.

  When he had learned of the treachery of Adon, he believed he had found that task. So he had bent his knowledge and abilities to the opposition of the dark powers his master called forth in his relentless search for power, and sought since to follow him and avenge the evil acts he had committed.

  It was an arduous undertaking, he knew, for Adon had proceeded farther down the arcane paths of forbidden knowledge than anyone living and he himself had turned aside prematurely, and was not his equal in power. More, he was not trusted by the surviving foreign enclaves. Indeed, he had nearly escaped being hunted down as Adon’s accomplice by the German Essenes, and had been formally shunned after presenting himself to the Council Of Yahad at Ein Gedi in Palestine. He could expect no help from them. Yet he could see no other course.

  Now The Rider passed like a tuft of cotton on a ghostly breeze through the window and into the open night. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a crude talisman in the shape of a horse molded from red clay. It had been the gift of a Cheyenne medicine man, and with a few moments’ gesturing, The Rider called upon the ethereal energies in which he swam. The horse fetish drew them as a magnet draws filaments from all corners, fashioning them into an equine form whose mane shone like golden fire, and whose brassy hooves stamped impatient sparks upon the shadow ground. Onto the back of this spirit animal, he allowed his etheric self to gently settle, and gripping the brilliant mane in his fists, he gave his heels to its flanks and set off east, across the dark land at the speed of forgotten dreams.

  He gave no thought to the mortal flesh he left entranced within the protective circle. No hell-born minion of Molech’s, nor any vagabond spirit of ill intent, could circumvent the ancient wards.

  It was no spirit that crossed his magic lines.

  * * * *

  Cut Tom and Bull crept into the room expecting to find the Jew asleep in bed. They didn’t even plan to fire their guns, just dash his skull to pieces on the pillow with the barrels. When they quietly as cats unlocked the door to the room and slipped in from the hall, they almost leapt out the open window for fright at what appeared to be the Jew crouching in the middle of the floor, expectant.

  No flash lit the room beyond the dim flickering candles the Jew had set up, and no lead screamed across the darkness to punch holes in their bodies.

  The Jew sat there, still as a gravestone.

  “What is he?” Bull hissed. “Asleep?”

  “He ain’t never gonna wake up,” Tom murmured, cocking his .44.

  Tom crossed the creaking floor, peering hesitantly at the calm face of the Jew in the waving light. He took note of the weird scratches on the floor, but they meant nothing to him. The Jew’s coat was lying on the bed, though his pistol was still strapped around his waist.

  What commanded Tom’s eye was the amount of doodads the Jew wore. He was entirely draped in baubles and trinkets, stuff that had the look of Indian and gypsy jewelry. Bangles and armbands, dozens of necklaces, brooches and rings clung to his body, nearly blotting out the white shirt beneath. Stones of every color gleamed in the sputtering candlelight. That was the source of the clinking. Was this some kind of Jew peddler then, so afraid of thieves he kept all his wares about his person?

  He had heard Jews were avaricious, but he hadn’t guessed the extent. He hunkered down in front of the Jew and spit in his face. It smacked wetly against the bearded man’s cheek, but even then, his closed eyelids didn’t flinch.

  “Wake up, you son of a bitch,” Tom hissed, pressing the barrel of his pistol to the Jew’s forehead. “Wake up, and die!”

  The Chinee girl almost killed him.

  “Leave him be, you sunnabitch!” she yelled from the hallway. He hadn’t even known she could speak any American besides what he’d paid her to say that rowdy afternoon.

  She pointed the silvery barrel of a little .32 pistol at him. He could see it perfect in the dim light, it was so bright and clean. He even saw the blunt noses of the cartridges in the wheel, assuring him it was no joke.

  Bull saved him. He turned and smacked the girl hard with the back of his hand. The pistol spit a bullet into the ceiling and she fell hard against the opposite wall. In a minute they could hear Burly tromping up the stairs. Tom had promised Dan no holes in the walls.

  Cut Tom turned back to the Jew and wrinkled his nose.

  “No fun,” said Bull, who had come to stand over him.

  “You got that right,” agreed Tom. “Don’t know what his deal is.” He flicked his finger hard across the Jew’s nose, sending a trickle of blood from one nostril into the curls of his beard. Still, the Jew didn’t move. “It’s like he’s dead already.”

  He stood, knees popping. He eased the hammer down on his .44 and shrugged.

  “Hoist him up, Bull. Let’s take him downstairs and have some fun with him.”

  * * * *

  Territorial Deputy Marshal Billy Shivers watched the light from the four campfires dance like devils on the sides of the dark dwellings of Little Jerusalem.

  Jackrabbit John, the Navajo tracker, sat on a boulder with his back to the fire, sipping his coffee and looking up at the stars. Reverend Shallbetter was stalking back and forth, pulling his curly chin whiskers and slinging low, Biblically inspired threats at the unseen Jews.

  All the men could taste the salt of Shallbetter’s bloodlust, even Billy. The man had every right. He had a little girl somewhere in there, probably murdered. But that didn’t give Billy the go ahead to unleash a bunch of mad dogs on a town of fifty people who might not have anything to do with it. He had heard all the blood drinking Jew talk since this bad business had begun, and had felt the heart of the town turn against these people, just as he’d felt all the eyes turning to him for satisfaction. Billy had been marshal here ever since the Apache troubles. He had never had too many dealings with the Jews. They were a private people, only coming to town to pick up packages and groceries and to sell wool and the occasional mutton. Nobody’d ever had a problem with them much, until now.

  He was the only man holding the leash, and even their respect of his authority wouldn’t last forever. His badge was the only thing that kept them from being a flat out lynch mob. He had done all he could do, hollering out to Hayim Cardin to give up the culprit and the kidnapped girl alive or dead. Maybe the Jews were forted up, terrified of what would happen if they gave up a dead girl to them. Maybe they had every reason to be afraid. Billy had no doubt a good deal of these men with him tonight had signed on not so much for the right of it, but for the sanction to kill.

  A lot of strangers had volunteered. Some were rough men who did bloody business on the border. Men whose faces probably belonged on the wall of his office. Others he had never seen at all. They were quiet men with clean faces, too p
retty for the valley, but who also looked like they would not suffer you suggesting it; men who might not listen to him if he told them to quit. A lot of knives were out and scraping. The smell of gun oil was in the air.

  Little Jerusalem would burn if these men and Reverend Shallbetter had their way.

  Just then, the reverend stooped down beside him, the fire writhing in his dark eyes and chasing his silver beard with living orange.

  “When, Marshal?” He trembled and spat into the fire, like he was spitting in the Devil’s own face. “When?”

  “Just give it till dawn, preacher,” he said for the fifth time. “We go in there before first light with all these guns and we’ll just wind up shootin’ each other. Besides, dawn’s the deadline I gave ‘em.”

  “But my daughter!” the reverend pleaded, foaming at the lips, frantic to get in there. “Those heathens…”

  Then Jackrabbit John let out a wild scream unlike any Billy had ever heard come out of a grown man. He jumped from his boulder, sending his tin coffee mug clanging down, and went running off into the dark, not even stopping to grab his blanket.

  “What the hell got into that Injin?” somebody from the other fire called out.

  All the men were on their feet, unnerved by the display. All the men, Billy noticed, but the quiet, clean bunch sharing a fire.

  They could hear the tracker’s feet pounding through the sand, receding into the night. He never came back.

  What John Ghacho (whom the Indah called Jackrabbit John) had seen was a light out in the dark, between Delirium Tremens and Little Jerusalem. He’d watched it for a minute as it got bigger and brighter, and become the ghostly, translucent apparition of a dark rider bent low over a horse of flame, galloping through the blackness. A witch, or the restless ghost of some man murdered in the desert. John Ghacho had watched his uncle wither and die from a skinwalker’s curse, and as a boy he’d seen a witch cavorting with evil spirits on a dark mountaintop. He’d had all the dealings he’d cared to with such things, and departed forthwith for home.

  Let the angry sin buster, and the lawman, and these blood mad Indah, fight witches and ghosts. He had no interest in losing his soul tonight.

  The quiet, clean men turned from their fire. They did not look after the fleeing Indian, but towards the town. Then a moment’s silent conference seemed to pass between them, and they went back to staring into the flames.

  * * * *

  The Rider drew his ethereal mount a stop in the middle of the dark, quiet settlement. There was not much time. God’s killers were already among the marshal’s posse. He had seen them sitting around the fire, silent figures in the guise of gunmen, their black wings unfurling at the sight of him. He had been sure they would intercept him, but true to her word, the angel kept them in check.

  He set to his purpose.

  The windows of the squat mud jacals were uniformly dim and shuttered, locked tight and either empty or populated by men and women who slept guiltless or unaware of the invaders camped at their outskirts, waiting for the dawn to ride in and kill them all.

  The Rider wove his mount through the buildings, and after one pass found the synagogue. The wood of its steps had trapped several blowing tumbleweeds. The mezuzah in the door jamb lay broken in its housing. The door was chained with links of rusty iron.

  He frowned. This was not the temple of a devout community. It was a place of spiders. He urged the horse up the broken steps, but it balked, refusing to cross the mezuzah.

  There would be nothing in there to see anyway. He could not even feel the presence of a Torah behind these walls. God had not been welcome in this house for a long time.

  He turned his mount about and trotted back toward the houses.

  Before the door of a nondescript cabin, he swung down from the back of his spirit mount and patted it fondly on the withers with the Cheyenne fetish. It dipped its head obediently and faded into nothingness.

  Insubstantial, The Rider passed through the bolted door of the home and peered about for a moment at a tidy but empty dwelling devoid of ornamentation. No menorah in the cupboards, no scripture, but a brick of salt pork in the pantry. A second home was also empty. Where were the Jews of Little Jerusalem?

  He sank through the wall of the second place, and spied another small home with a sliver of lamplight glowing beneath its door.

  He moved to it.

  * * * *

  Joseph Klein prayed over his meal. He prayed as he always did, first for thanksgiving; that he and his wife and son lived still by the mercy and grace of the Lord. Then, as always, he prayed for forgiveness, and that atonement for his horrible sin might be made possible. Tonight, he prayed also for the life of the Christian girl, and for the lives of his family. He asked God to stay His imminent wrath from the neck of his boy, Eli, who was yet four years shy of manhood. These last prayers were silent. He did not want to upset his wife, Rebech.

  He watched his son eat from across the table. Here was a young mensch. He knew his scripture, he was obedient. How proud of him Joseph was! God, must he die for what his cowardly father had done? Was it not written that ‘a son shall not be put to death for the sins of his father, nor a father for the sins of his son?’ Yet who was he to remind the Lord of this? Who was he, who had forgotten it was also said his own blood was not redder than any other’s. Yet he lived, and his family lived. And many had died.

  Rebech set down her fork loudly and put her fingers to her head. When he dared to look his wife in the eye, it was a red rimmed gaze that met his; it was a face lined and burdened as he knew his own must be.

  “Papa,” she said, her voice cracking in her throat. “We cannot do this anymore. We cannot just sit here!”

  He closed his eyes. The old argument. And what was his side of it? Cowardice. Fear. Yet sinner that he was, he held to it.

  “Rebech...we’ve prayed. What else can we do? You’re frightening Eli. Please. Let’s eat.”

  Coward.

  “Don’t tell me that!” she nearly shouted, making the boy jump. “Will you let us burn with those others? At least let’s go and speak to the marshal....”

  Joseph put his head in his hands, thinking of how he had flinched at her words—burn with those others. God, did he not deserve to be burned?

  “If we go to them, they will shoot us down like we were one of the others. We cannot. Rebech, we are in God’s hands now.”

  “Joseph.”

  Joseph looked up in shock. It was Eli who had spoken. He was sitting straight up in his chair—had laid aside his fork and was staring solemnly at him. Eli never composed himself in that way, and he had never called Joseph by name. Why, he was his father! What…

  “Joseph,” the boy said again, and not in the voice of a precocious boy, but in one of gravity, and with a familiarity and wholeness of mind the nine year old had never possessed. Further, his words came in a flawless Aramaic, the boy having never even heard let alone commanded. “Where are they? Where is the girl?”

  Rebech stared speechless at her son and looked to Joseph.

  “What...” she began.

  But Joseph ignored her. He was not at this table now, cowering in the hell he had built around them all. He was fifteen or twenty years ago, all the old mystic teachings coming back to him. And this was not his son. Oh, his son was there, dozing somewhere behind those suddenly fierce eyes, but it was someone else who looked out from them.

  Someone he thought he knew.

  “Rebech…go to the bedroom and shut the door.”

  “What is going on?”

  “Bashert, do as I say, as you love the Lord and obey me,” he mumbled, unable to look away from the bold gaze of his own son.

  She looked to Eli now.

  “What is wrong? Eli!”

  “Go!” Joseph shouted.

  She jumped to her feet, lingered over the table, and then he heard her cross the kitchen to their room and open the door.

  “Please, my bashert. Do not listen at the door either,” h
e said meekly, sorry for his outburst.

  “I-I won’t,” she stammered.

  He heard the door close.

  In Aramaic, he spoke to whoever possessed his son.

  “Who are you? I think I know you.”

  “You do,” said the boy. “Or did. Just now you were praying. I guess the Lord has sent an idolater as answer.”

  “You?” Joseph leaned forward, incredulous, thinking back to his days as a teacher among The Sons of the Essenes. There had been an American born boy of exceptional promise, with favorable lines and promising physiognomy who had grown into a man of phenomenal prowess in the mystic arts of the sacred Merkabah tradition. Every member of the Order took a new name. It was a necessity when dealing with demons and angels, for should one of those entities learn a man’s true name, he could be rendered dangerously powerless. Before this boy and his traitorous master (who had taken the name Adon, or ‘lord’ in his unmitigated narcissism) had turned their backs on the mitzvah and been cast out, before he was called Idolater, he had come to be known only as The Rider.

  “I’ve been looking for Adon. I didn’t know what drew me here,” the man in his boy went on. “It was only when I got over the mountains that I realized it was the prayer of a tzadik.”

  Joseph’s cheeks reddened. He lowered his chin and shook his head, feeling a hotness in his eyes.

  “Ha-Shem would send you.” Joseph smiled, the tears leaking now from his eyes, “to humble me. I deserve it. I have forsaken my duty, more so even than your master did.”

  “Can one of the hidden saints forsake his duty? Isn’t it hashgakha pratit?” The Rider asked through the lips of his son, using the Hebrew words for divine providence.