She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror
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It extended its index finger, which I had to concede was a neat trick, and it dipped its fingertip into the fake blood on the wall. And then it started writing a message in blood, on the perfect white wall.
It wrote:
Mene?
Mene?
Tekel! Upharsin.
When it had done the last full-stop, the hand fell to the floor and was still.
“They must have cut the strings,” I whispered to Evelyn. I peered up at the ceiling to see if I could see where the strings had originated.
I wondered what happened next. The woman was just lying there, motionless. Surely now was the time to get up and take her bow. It was hardly the greatest cabaret I’d ever seen. Or maybe it was cutting edge performance art, a deliberately amateur show that was meant to be a deconstruction of war or capitalism - or performance art.
Whatever it was, it had to be more than a woman pretending to be dead for longer than was necessary.
“Now what happens?” I asked Evelyn.
“Now everyone interprets the writing wrong,” she said. “Father Morton?”
Father Morton gave the bible version.
“Two and a half thousand years ago, Belshazzar was the ruler of Babylon, a wicked and pagan kingdom. A severed hand appeared at Belshazzar’s great banquet, and wrote Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin on the wall. Daniel, the prophet, interpreted it as meaning that Belshazzar’s deeds had been Mene, meaning numbered, and Tekel, meaning weighed and found wanting, so his kingdom would be Upharsin, which was a pun on the words for "divided" and "Persia." Belshazzar was slain the next day, and his kingdom was split between the Medes and the Persians.”
“So what does tonight’s writing mean?”
The speaker was a handsome white-haired man. The crowd around us was suddenly exceedingly still.
“Hey Daddy,” said Evelyn, putting her arm round his middle.
So this was the big shot Mr. Chase. Big, big shot.
“Well, maybe it’s a warning,” said Father Morton, “like the company’s going to be torn apart, Sir.”
He couldn’t quite make eye-contact while he said it.
“What about you, Tony? You agree?”
Evelyn whispered: “Soothsayer,” as a non-descript man stepped forward from the crowd.
“On balance, yes, I agree, Sir. There’s not much room for ambiguity.”
“Well it’s sounding great so far,” said Chase senior, with a smile that was just a touch too wide. “Anyone got a different view?”
I coughed; he didn’t hear.
But Evelyn did.
“Daniel has a different view, Daddy.”
“Go on, son,” said Chase, “what you got?”
“The words are biblical but the punctuation isn’t,” I said. “I think the use of question marks in Mene? Mene? and the exclamation mark in Tekel! changes the sense completely. I think it’s like saying: ‘Is it cold? No, it’s freezing!" I think Mene? Mene? Tekel! is talking about something that will be so numerous that you won’t be able to count it, you will have to weigh it instead.”
“Like what?” he said.
“Like money, Sir. I think your company is going to enter into a venture that will make you so much money you will have to weigh it instead of counting it.”
“What kind of venture, Son?”
“Well, the last word Upharsin meant Persia, Sir, and that was the old name for Iran. So I think there’s going to be an invasion of Iran, Sir, and it’s going to be awesome for your company.”
He laughed.
“I do like a man who tells me what I want to hear. You’re hired, as of now. You’ll have your own staff.”
“But…”
He held up his hand.
“Son, we worship Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood. They give us guidance when we ask for it, but it’s often unclear. We need people like you to help us to read the signs. There aren’t many people like you. You’ve just been made Head of Prophecy.”
Something caught my eye across the room. It was my brother, raising his glass to me.
“But…”
“Evey will answer your questions,” said Mr Chase.
“But…”
And he was gone.
***
It was me and Evelyn, surrounded by the sounds of a happy party: chatter, music, ice in glasses.
The woman on the stage still lay motionless, in a pool of fake blood.
“Now, she’s got a shitty job,” I said, to Evelyn.
“You’re smiling,” she said.
“I am smiling,” I said. “I don’t think I ever found anything so satisfying to translate. It’s like, that was a real challenge. It’s amazing. Who thought up that test? Is there like some guy you employ just to set translation exams?”
She looked at me.
“I passed the test!” I said. “I aced it. No one else did. Damn I feel good.”
“Good enough to go upstairs with me?”
Well obviously I wasn’t going to go upstairs with her. Obviously I wasn’t going to do that. Or if I was, it wasn’t going to get physical. It wasn’t going to be sex. Not even a kiss.
I mean, obviously.
***
I screamed her name three times before the dawn.
***
Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood looked down on me.
***
I was far beyond any further feeling: so many pleasure receptors had burnt out; so many pain ones too.
After that shock and awe, at last I saw the truth.
The severed hand wasn’t special effects, I knew that now. The words were not written by a guy who set translation tests.
“Who was the woman?” I said as the sun broke the horizon. “The one who was killed in the show.”
Evelyn ran her fingers through my hair.
“She used to work here. And she was a virgin,” she said. “The death of innocence fuels the messages. Did you know that?”
Innocence.
Innocents.
The Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood looked down on me.
I thought back over what had just happened.
Evelyn and I had done all the things that couples do when one of them is saving himself for marriage. And a dozen other things that don’t make the books you find in stores.
She and I had done everything, except the main event.
“Why didn’t we have sex?” I said.
“Because you’re still a virgin.”
“Ha,” I said. “No way.”
On this one I was on solid ground.
“Me and Callie Westerbrook. June 15th, four years ago. She was a waitress at the beach-side restaurant, I was a kitchen porter. We did it on the dunes in the moonlight one night.”
“You didn’t have intercourse,” she said.
“I did! Find her and ask her.”
“We did find her and ask her,” she said. “Callie told us that the sex you had was intercrural. You were thrusting into her pushed-together thighs. She didn’t want to get pregnant, and she guessed you wouldn’t know the difference.”
She looked at me.
The Gods looked at me.
The room was very, very quiet.
“I’m still a virgin?”
She nodded.
I thought about all the research that had gone into establishing that I had never actually had sex.
My brother had been in on it, of course. And then he maneuvered me here. Perhaps he wasn’t such a sorry headhunter after all.
Because they’d got their prophet. I’d walked right into their trap.
Almost.
“I haven’t accepted the job, yet,” I said.
“Oh, but you will. You’re going to have so much fun. The translation work is fascinating. And the girls, I tell you. You’re going to love them.”
“But they won’t ever have full sex with me?”
“No. That would kill your power of prophecy.”
“Well, the guards here, for one thing. This building is your home now.”
Something very cold passed over me.
“Can I leave at all?”
“No. We like to keep our prophecy in-house.”
She said it calmly.
“So what happens if I try to leave right now, this minute?”
She laughed. “You wouldn’t make it to the lift.”
I believed her. I tried not to panic.
“Look,” I said, “Believe me. Whatever you want, you can have it. Let me just go back to my old life, okay? This is a mistake. You’ve got the wrong man. I’m not corporate. I’m not a drone. I’ll go nuts, I won’t be any use. Let me just go back to Sarah. We’ll move abroad…”
“Sarah’s dead, I’m afraid.”
“Dead? Of what?”
“Of several bullets, and some other stuff.”
I squinted at her in disbelief.
“Daniel, your DNA and prints are everywhere at the crime scene, in all the most incriminating places. Like on the knife, and the ropes. It was horrible what you did. If you’re caught and tried, you’ll be the darling of the prison block. You’ll be raped in your cell, day and night. Sarah was a virgin angel and you murdered her. You did some other bad things to her body, too. Seriously, you don’t ever want to leave here.”
The trouble was I believed her. I had no doubt that Bell, Chase & Herr would happily murder anyone to get their way, or to make their point - or just have some fun.
“The upside,” said Evelyn, “is that we got another message on the wall, from her blood. But we can’t translate it. You want to hear the message?”
I knew that if I said yes then I would be accepting the job.
The Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, looked down on me.
Their mouths were frozen, but I knew they had so much to say. So much. So much.
And only I could help them get it out.
It would take death, of course. The endless death of innocence.
It would be carnage, always.
But the power I would have. The things I would see.
“What’s it like?” I whispered to her.
“It’s like this,” she said.
Her fingers closed my eyes, and the gods showed me their plans.
I saw a small boy walking down the street, as a bomb went off next to him, blowing him apart.
I heard a journalist talking, sincerely, of Freedom and Peace.
I smelled napalm and meat and sweat in the twilight.
I touched the flesh of the wanton dead, and the willing living.
I tasted the ashes of skyscrapers that I had helped bring down.
Then the vision ended.
I opened my eyes.
I longed to go again.
“So?” she said.
All that power.
All that burning power would be mine, if I accepted. But I knew, too, that it would hollow me out.
He who channels those Gods will pay.
A mind can only see so much, before it catches fire.
“What happens when I can’t do it anymore?” I said.
“You die with dignity, calmly, on the stage, and your successor will interpret what’s written in your blood.”
So. The woman was the previous Head of Prophecy.
Babylon had never been destroyed. It had simply changed with the times, guided by the Gods that had never gone away.
“If I say yes, what happens after I die?”
Heaven seemed irrelevant. Hell too parochial.
“You would go to the land of the Gods.”
“And what’s that like?”
“Cruel, and wonderful.”
“I can’t imagine that,” I said.
But I could. I really could.
“So? Daniel?” she said.
So.
I knew I should say no.
I knew I should seek terrible vengeance on the company for what they did to Sarah. I knew I should go out all guns blazing, in revolt at the overwhelming evil they so casually employed. But everyone can be bought. Everyone has a price.
And they knew mine. It wasn’t even money.
I closed my eyes in defeat and acceptance.
I took the job, as we both knew I would.
I said: “Tell me what they wrote in Sarah’s blood.”
***
After I had translated it, Evelyn did something new to my body as the sun rose higher, and the diligent workers of Bell, Chase & Herr started their new day, and more of my pain and pleasure receptors began to wither and fail, and the Gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, stone and wood, looked down on their new hire, and faraway the war machines began to board their ships, and women, who would soon be widowed and childless, woke from happy dreams.
As if Favorites of their God
By Christi Krug
I remember her eyes that cold spring morning, eyes of grey that quivered and changed; the way she looked at me, straight and still. It was the day I would learn of my end. That day I would eat my fear, swallow it whole, line my gut with it. My eternity would be set.
For Temborah, the morning was like any other. She and her apprentice, Hermuth, did their work in that hovel of an excuse for a house. Temborah showed Hermuth the herbs they would sort and mix. They began their work, hands flying. Hermuth pierced her finger on a thorn, and heard herself swearing by the gods. Temborah glanced up, quick.
“I don’t believe in the gods,” said Temborah.
“But you’re a witch.” Hermuth looked at the tall woman in the grey shift. “You must believe in the gods.”
Temborah closed her eyes, tilted back her head and rolled her loose black curls salted with white. “I don’t have to believe in anything. Yes, I see the spirits. I speak with the dead. I can look beyond this shallow, thin world of ours. But I don’t believe in any deities, especially the petty Hebrew god.”
Hermuth shook out her fingers, picked up her pestle. She pulverized the yellow buds. A bouquet filled the air: the gentle sweetness of chamomile and the brightness of anise, the spice of cinnamon and the decay of bone and bark. Temborah nodded at the progress of her helper.
When she then sorted clumps of herbs, she stopped for a moment.
“Perhaps I would not spurn the Hebrew god,” Temborah offered, “if I understood the god’s followers. But the spirits of the Hebrew holy ones don’t behave as they should. When they die, instead of hovering near the earth, they disappear, like mists before the sun on Lake Kinneret. As if they are favorites of their god, who cannot bear to be without them. They can never be reached after they die.” She reached up to a high ledge and took down several clay jars. She inspected them, arranged them on the table. “As if they are too good for the grave, too good for this world.”
Hermuth nodded and passed her bowl, then took up the next bundle of dried herbs, untying the twine and breaking the flowered heads into an urn.
Temborah raised her brows in a show of carelessness.
“Since I cannot speak with such spirits,” she said, “I have no way to judge the god of the Hebrews. Whether their god is just, or merciful. Or whether this god exists at all.” She poured the freshly ground powder into the mouth of the jar, tapping a finger to sift it down the long neck. “Surely this god does not care for the living.” She nodded inward to the hut. “The stories of these Hebrews, their king, and the commands their god gives - they are terrible. The laws. I’ll never understand.”
She shook her head and laughed a single bitter laugh.
Hermuth began to reply, then steadied her bottom lip with her teeth. She knew how the king’s laws had caused the death of Temborah’s own grandmother at the hands of Hebrew soldiers, forty years ago.
Temborah held her head high, looking down through her long eyelashes. Hermuth marveled how, despite Temborah’s scars, she was vibrant and lovely.
“I ca
n bring strength to the withered thigh,” said Temborah, “can brighten the eye once dimmed, and cleanse the leper with my tonics.” She wrapped one hand around the jar. “I know the path of blood in a man. I can embitter or sweeten water, and can knead a woman’s foot to open her womb.” She held the jar aloft, a faint smile on her lips.
“But I don’t understand this god of the Hebrews,” Temborah finished, “and clearly she does not understand me.”
Hermuth held her pestle in midair. She stared at Temborah, her shawl slipping from her shiny rolling shoulders. Temborah reached over and took the pestle and bowl from her younger helper. Finally Hermuth managed a whisper, “They’ll kill you for such words. You cannot call their god a woman.”
“Chaff!” said Temborah. “I will say what I will say. The Hebrews would kill me if they knew of my arts. I am no longer a child to be wrenched away from everything she knows, and married off to a fool.”
She tipped another bowl of powder into a tall jar.
“My life is forfeit if they find me. At least now I practice my arts. For a little while.”
She stared at the swirled powders, wondering silently what had changed. These last few years, she rarely heard the spirits. Hers was a great sadness, a heart like an empty bowl.
Later Temborah put Hermuth to sweeping the dirt floor, and set a pot to boil. A strange creature hobbled through the open door. A reject of animals. A crazed duck with bird feet, legs long and bright red as if dipped in blood. Flapping one wing, the animal cried in a wheezy caw. Temborah smiled at the creature then yelled back at Hermuth. “Throw some grain in the yard for Zipporah, will you? I’m off to the market for fish hearts.”
***
For me, the morning began in the middle of the night. With a headache, and much work to do. The leather ties would not fasten in my fingers. “Dammit, get me a cloak that fits!” I yelled, and threw the garment to my floor where it made a silken puddle on the polished acacia. I went through my trunk again.
“Ridiculous!” I muttered. Such pains I took to get attention anymore.