Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Read online

Why was Joseph here, in this refuge of blasphemy?

  Molech, the old bull. The angel had said he was here.

  The Rider had encountered him before, during one of his more hazardous astral expeditions. A demon and marshal of Hell who had set himself up as a king in ages past, who gorged on the cooked flesh of infants and washed it down with tears. The sinful Jews of Canaan had sacrificed to him, beating drums to drown out the wailing of mothers. Even Solomon had paid him bloody tribute before men of God had toppled his glowing idols.

  Now, to find him here...and to find Joseph among his flock!

  Joseph had been a mentor to him in his early studies of the Kabbalah, back when he had been a wide eyed young scholar, a talmidei khakham, only guessing at the wonders and terrors that existed in the world beyond. He had been called not Canaanite or blasphemer then, but prodigy, and allowed to study the mystic teachings at an unheard of age.

  He pressed his forehead to the floor between his knees in the posture of ultimate supplication, and prepared to venture forth again.

  * * * *

  It was well on into night when Cut Tom and Bull swaggered back into the El Moderado and cornered Dan at the bar, cajoling him for their guns so they could go upstairs and kill the sleeping Jew. Burly had swept the busted glass up behind the bar and mopped up twenty five dollars of wasted liquor. Now he was at the bar, dealing solitaire.

  “I don’t think so. Once he’s shot you two idiots,” said Dan, riffling the cards, “he’ll come down and put one in me.”

  “He’s gotta be sleepin’ by now,” Tom pleaded, sensing that the time they’d spent seeking courage in the bottom of a whiskey bottle and trying to persuade Dan was not going to be wasted. “We’ll just sneak upstairs and get his gun from him.”

  “He won’t just hand it over,” Dan said.

  “I don’t want him to.” Tom leered. “By God, you know I don’t. Let us have him, Dan.” He leaned in and lowered his voice, and Dan had to blink back the odor of condensed liquor that puffed out with the effort. “We’ll cut you in.”

  Dan seemed to consider, then nodded to Burly.

  “Alright, but don’t put any holes in the walls.”

  In a moment the guns were back on the bar, along with a spare key to the Jew’s room. Tom and Bull both reached eagerly for them, but Dan slapped a hand over the key and met Tom’s eyes first.

  “You can keep that fancy pistol. But I want his kit. That Jew was jingling with shekels goin’ up the stairs.”

  Cut Tom licked his lips and looked once back at Bull.

  “Deal,” he said, and headed for the stairs, key in one fist, gun in the other.

  * * * *

  The Rider stood.

  It was an airy feeling, weightless. The familiar pains were gone, inhabiting the empty amalgamation of tissue and bone that still knelt on the floor in the center of the circle. The hunger and thirst that had tempered his body like a penitent’s belt of nails was gone, but seemed to call from afar for his return. He ignored them, and drew his ethereal legs from the top of his drooping skull like a man stepping out of a pair of pants.

  The bodiless journey of a Merkabah rider was never easy. One’s travel was often impeded by the intercession of baleful spirits. Not just the guardian angels that would let a soul pass with the proper incantations, but also demons that would tear an unprotected spirit apart. Merkabah traditions had prescribed the use of certain protective incantations and wards. This was not an intrusion into the seven heavens, but merely a journey to the Yenne Velt, the shadow world of earthbound ghosts, and so did not require his most complex preparations. Yet knowing that Molech was involved, it didn’t hurt to be prepared.

  He not so much looked for, but felt the presence of the corresponding talismans and mystic implements about his etheric body. Every charm, every snatch of holy text, bit of rare colored animal, Turkish eye, and sacred stone he wore, lent their individual power and protection to his ethereal double.

  It had been a point of vehement contention between The Rider, his master, Adon, and his other teachers, that he employed not only the holy tefillin phylacteries with their sacred inscriptions, the Hamesh hand amulet and other strictly Kabbalistic talismans to protect against spiritual assault on his ethereal form, but also such non-Jewish bodyguards as he had first been introduced to by his master, such as the powerful Mohammaden Ayat-Al Kursi amulet, the Tibetan Ga’u box, the Hindu svastika, and the Abbada Ke Dabra.

  The rebbes had assailed Adon with the law he knew only too well;

  “Against him that turns after familiar spirits and after wizards, I will set my face and cut him off from among his people.”

  He and Adon both had been dubbed apostates and minim. For a time, The Rider had resented their ire. His master had taught him that God had opened many avenues to His glory, and to fetter oneself in dogma was to insist on riding an ass across the ocean.

  It was only after the war he came to realize the truth lay somewhere in between. Adon had not sought God, except as a metaphor for power. The Rider had narrowly avoided following his teacher down a dark and sinful road. Adon’s teachings had made him an outcast among the Hasidim and his secret order, the Sons of the Essenes, though he still wore their trappings and considered himself one of their number.

  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 had 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. The Rider 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 Misquamacus, the great 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 fl
anks 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.”

  * * * *

  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 pretty 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 to 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 a
t 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 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. The Lord 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 horse 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.