She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror

by ed. Tim W. Lieder

  She wheeled her Dromedary into the lot and dismounted. The steel studs on her jacket and pants flashed in the fading light. She passed beneath a tall sign with worn block letters in a round-bulbed frame. Half the bulbs had been burned out for eons. The other half kept shining, as if powered by eternal filaments. Hanging high off the ground and shrouded in perpetual gloaming, they kept the name of NAIOTH visible to those who knew where to look.

  Leave it to God to put His navel out in the middle of nowhere.

  She laughed. Like anything Yahweh did made sense.

  ***

  Loudspeakers shook with the screams of two dozen steel strings on reverb. A melody hid somewhere in the cacophony, but Tamar couldn't find it. The noise blew through her, as though rending the very fabric of the universe. More likely it was just bad music.

  It must have been more than that for the prophet stumbling in the smoky dark, bumping into Tamar and pointing toward empty space.

  She hunched over and grumbled into his ear, "I don't see anything, Solomon."

  His shaky finger wove. "Look closer, sister."

  "I'm not your sister."

  She scowled at the malnourished youth, whose rheumy eyes argued, Yes, you are.

  Tamar raised her voice during an especially painful crescendo. "Trust me, Sol, I've had my fill of half-brothers. That's not a role you want to play." She waved toward a distant stage. "Do you really want that wreck for a father?"

  He giggled by her side.

  "No choice."

  No. Probably not. Tamar shot a glance at Solomon's sallow face and at the sticks that passed for arms and legs. His bony finger kept pointing.

  He wore his linen ephod over a threadbare rayon shirt and blue jeans ripped at the knees. Tamar looked away, but Solomon's hand returned her gaze to his vision, whatever it was.

  What prophet didn't point? For that matter, what prophet wasn't related to her? Solomon was probably right about their shared blood, considering all the women who followed David into his trailer between sets, clutching bottles of cheap wine.

  In front, hundreds of bodies rubbed against each other like millet in a hopper. They gyrated to the waves of distortion tearing from her father's onyx lyre. Tamar could see only a fuzzy stage glow from the far end of the warehouse. If she squinted, she could make out David's tiny, hyperactive silhouette.

  Solomon tried to shout above the din. Tamar hunched down to hear him better.

  "He can't open the way," the kid was saying.

  "Between the worlds," she said. She'd visited often enough to know the lingo.

  Solomon's finger drew a line in the air as he nodded. "Slit's still good and tight."

  The lyre's scream intensified as blood roared in Tamar's head. Solomon's choking brought her out of her haze of rage. She hadn't remembered grabbing his pale neck.

  She stared at the welts her thumbs left before the boy doubled over, coughing. She rasped down at him, "Very bad choice of words."

  He shook his head, tears streaming from his eyes.

  Her rape was no great secret, but only Tamar and Amnon had heard that filthy croon. Amnon had not referred to rips in the universe when he sang those words. He'd been too busy ripping into her.

  "Did the Mayor of Ramah tell you to say that?" The ephod bunched in Tamar's tapered fingers.

  Solomon clutched her arms, wheezing. His head swung side to side. "No. Yahweh…"

  She pushed him away. Leave it to the Deity to taunt her. At least Tamar stood too far back to see the panties thrown onstage as her wasted father tortured his instrument.

  ***

  The din faded as Tamar descended to the bar. Her steel-toed boots clanged against Naioth's curved stairs, metal scaffolding cold as a snake's spine.

  Her own violence had shaken her. Again. The light of Yahweh might shine from Solomon's eyes, but he was still just a boy. She'd kill him if she wasn't careful.

  And the child was blameless. He'd never laid a finger on her. He said what he was told to say; he saw what Yahweh wanted him to see. That's all. If Tamar killed anyone, it should be the Mayor of Ramah. If Yahweh were truly a just god, Amnon would be dead instead of lounging in his City Hall, smug under his cloak of respectability.

  She huffed through smoke, passing yellow lamps hanging off the basement's paneled wall. The dark wood complemented the bar's lack of windows, creating a pungent cocoon of drug-laced air. She didn't need to drop extra shekels for hallucinogens in her wine.

  Neither did Absalom. Planted at his usual table, his thick mane curled down a backrest as he stared into his drink, looking even more sour than usual. He lifted a heavy head, green eyes meeting Tamar's.

  She dropped into the chair opposite his. "Why do I even come here?"

  "To get away from him." Absalom's honey-colored eyebrow twitched. "It's either that or move out of Ramah altogether."

  "Like you did."

  Absalom leaned back and took a long swig from a chipped glass. His white shirt yawned open, letting his muscles catch the light. "Those three years in Geshur taught me that you can't get away from anything. Least of all your fate."

  "And your fate is to guzzle wine in Naioth's basement until you pass out."

  "I wish." His smooth fingers laced around the glass. "The prophets tell me differently."

  Echoes from David's lyre dropped through the ceiling and vanished in a steady buzz of slurred gossip. Absalom stared at the terebinth-paneled walls. Tamar waited.

  "Do you want to get rid of Amnon for good?"

  Tamar laughed and sipped her wine. She wanted to smash her glass and take its pointed shards to the mayor's balls. She didn't have to repeat her desire to her brother. Absalom had heard her oft-repeated rants over many a drink. "You're telling me it's possible, this time."

  "I'm telling you it's necessary, this time." His eyes searched hers out. "But if Amnon dies, then you'll lose me, too."

  He had to be pickled. This wasn't the first time Absalom had proposed a suicide mission, planning to storm past the mayor's retinue of security officers and bodyguards. He'd certainly get no sympathy from Ramah's citizens. Amnon had wiped the town clean of its whores and vagrants; most had relocated to cesspools like Geshur.

  Tamar tilted her chair back and crossed a studded ankle over her knee.

  "So, brother," she murmured, "how do you propose we do the deed this time?"

  "We have to kill David."

  His voice had never sounded more sober.

  ***

  Three fully-dosed drinks later, Tamar still didn't understand the prophecy. The drugs didn't do anything for her. The alcohol only made her muzzy-headed.

  She stood in the parking lot, trying to wash her brain clean in the cold desert air. Meteors streaked above as the Milky Way arced past zenith. Tamar looked away from the black slit of its Great Rift. Nothing but dust obscured the light.

  The still-lit bulbs around Naioth's sign seemed brighter, like little supernovas next to dark glass and snapped filaments.

  Absalom consulted with Solomon inside. For a place the druggies claimed as the navel of Yahweh, Naioth possessed its share of lint. How many prophets had claimed that their universe - this universe - had been put together all wrong?

  In another world, David was king of Israel and Judah, the logical conclusion to his gang wars with the Philistines. He wasn't supposed to be a washed-up rocker dissipating himself on the outskirts of town.

  "Why not be a king?" Tamar leaned against a darkened lamppost and chortled, feeling sick. "America has Elvis, no?"

  She had long ago given up yearning to kill her father. Watching David's deterioration had faded Tamar's hatred to a slurry of disgusted pity whenever she gazed upon Naioth's hazy stagemaster. Her old man's debts had long ago claimed the spacious ranch house where she'd been forced to live with Amnon. She'd spent her childhood trying to hide as her half-brother's lust tracked her from every corner.

  Tamar wasn't about to begrudge David his inevitable decline, or his cramped trailer reeking of s
tale beer and staler sex.

  He wasn't the one in power.

  You're wrong. The memory of Solomon's thin voice sliced through the dark. The boy had looked like a wraith beside Absalom's robust, cut build. Everything hinges on Father.

  The vision seemed ludicrous and cruel, but Tamar was no prophet. Worse, if David died to set the universe right, it wouldn't erase what Amnon had done.

  That part of the prophecy doesn't change, Tamar.

  She turned watery eyes to the stars. She might be scarred in her agony, but she was alive. If Solomon spoke for Yahweh, then a repaired universe demanded Absalom's death as well.

  Tamar tried to glimpse the vast family gathered in Solomon's vision. For a time even the metallic screams of David's lyre faded behind a bleating chorus of sheep. The smells of wool and roasted mutton overpowered Naioth's acrid smoke. The dancers pressing against the stage became princes lounging in a sunny oasis. Jasmine-scented breezes raised the corners of festive tents.

  They'd all become creatures of antiquity. Decked in finery, Absalom whispered to his attendants. A drunken Amnon sprawled beneath peacock feather fans waved by servants. When he nodded off, the attendants followed their master's instructions, the first in line slipping a swift blade between the prince rapist's ribs.

  The universe around that too-quick, too-merciful execution doomed Absalom, too. He also had to die, so that David's forty-year reign could change the world.

  Tamar's steel toe scraped against gravel.

  Tell me, Yahweh, how is the world better for that?

  No heavenly voice or prophetic whisper answered. Meteors sporadic continued burning themselves out. What did she expect from God? She wasn't the visionary.

  If Saul were alive, Naioth might not even exist to house wasted prophets spouting their drivel. Tamar almost wished for a return to the incessant raids, which had increased in intensity and frequency after her father had fled Naioth in the first place. If Naioth were gone, maybe she could leave Ramah behind, never mind Absalom's mutterings about fate.

  For what would fate be without the prophecies?

  The prophets are addicted to the drugs, and you're addicted to the prophets. She barked a laugh. For all its destitution, this wretched outpost held more truth than pretty Ramah's tourist jitneys and picture postcards and deed restrictions. Filth lurked behind the fresh water spat from Ramah's marble fountains, behind its shopkeepers flashing pearly teeth. Clean streets. A complacent populace. Tamar wondered how many maidens Amnon banged each day, squeaking the black leather on his executive couch.

  He owned the apartment complex to which she would return before dawn. Nothing could stop him from procuring a key and letting himself in. She should have left Ramah.

  ***

  "I would stop him, Tamar."

  She shifted uneasily on her chair in Ramah's precinct office, squinting against the desert sun pouring past slatted blinds. Her cotton-covered knees pressed tightly together.

  "I doubt that, Jonathan. You're on Amnon's payroll."

  The chief of police steepled his fingers above a busy desk. A fan fluttered dispatches tacked to the wall as his gray eyes scrutinized her. "I share your concern for safety, Tamar. Let me remind you again that my surveillance costs for your building come out of my own pocket, not that it matters. I'm not trying to buy your trust."

  "I don't trust easily."

  "Nor should you." Jonathan smoothed down his salt-and-pepper goatee. "But that's not why you're here, is it? You usually come to me in the spring with this complaint."

  Tamar twisted in her chair. Maybe the sunlight would burn clarity into her if she stared at the window long enough. "Solomon told me to see you."

  "Bathsheba's boy?" He reached for a manila folder. "Is his mother in trouble again?"

  "No, nothing like that."

  His gnarled hands flipped through pages.

  "It isn't like a prophet to contact the police, even through an intermediary. You know the deal, Tamar. I leave the prophets alone and they leave me alone. You can thank Amnon for that. If Saul were still mayor, it'd be a different story."

  Tamar blinked afterimages away. She looked back at Jonathan's pinched brow, at his fingers nestled in graying locks. The chief of police still had his own issues. "Amnon's my father's firstborn son, but that isn't the only reason why you leave Naioth alone."

  "We're not here to talk about me, Tamar, or about David. What do you want?"

  "I am here to talk about David."

  Jonathan looked up from his papers.

  "He's supposed to be a king. Solomon said."

  "That's because the boy still loves his father." His chair tilted back on well-oiled hinges. "I can't say that I blame him. You've got a drugged child hero-worshipping a man who remains larger than life. I don't doubt David is the king of Naioth, and he will be the king of Naioth until he dies. Beloved by the lascivious and the insane."

  His long sigh stretched across the room.

  "We can let them both be happy."

  "David's not supposed to be like this."

  "Do you think I don't know that? I loved your father, Tamar."

  "That's not what I mean. The word of Yahweh…"

  Jonathan's eyes flashed. Tamar stopped speaking.

  "What the hell has the word of Yahweh got to do with a dilapidated dance club? That's not religion, Tamar. It's the drug trade. It's the black marketers. Burn out enough brain cells and you'd speak in ecstasy, too."

  He tossed the folder aside. His argument sounded forced, as if he didn't believe himself. "There is nothing sacred about putting on an ephod and falling down in your own piss."

  How readily she wanted to agree - to ignore the light in Solomon's eyes as they offered visions before her like a perverse movie projector. If her mission succeeded, Jonathan would also die beheaded on Mount Gilboa, impaled on the wall at Beth-shan, cremated in Jabesh. Shattered bones buried under a tamarisk tree.

  She whispered, "Solomon told me I would hear the word of God in the room of Michal's bride price."

  The sudden terror in Jonathan's eyes made her want to flee. Tamar huddled in her thin blouse; waited as he rubbed circulation back into his hands. She watched the fan make its slow rotations. A gust toyed with her spiky hair. Then it turned back toward the papers, a soft whir fading beneath Jonathan's labored breaths.

  "David delivered that bride price to my father," the chief of police said. "My father set up that room and then bequeathed it to me. No one else - certainly no woman - has ever set foot inside it or has even known of its existence. Not even David knew what became of Michal's bride price."

  Tamar didn't have to tell him that Yahweh had spoken of it first, squirting the drops of knowledge into Solomon's addled brain. She didn't have to tell Jonathan that Naioth was more than a dive. He'd been there, leading dozens of raids during Saul's pursuit of her father. Despite his protests, the chief of police knew that Yahweh had everything to do with the dilapidated dance club that had finally taken David away. The vein throbbed at Jonathan's temple.

  She struggled to find her voice. "I tell you only what Solomon told me."

  The papers on the wall lost their animation as Jonathan switched off the fan. Shadows fattened when he shut the blinds.

  "Amnon won't have access to your living quarters." He steered Tamar toward the door. His scowl almost hid his distress. "You're moving in with me."

  "I wasn't thinking…"

  "No, Tamar, you weren't. You don't know what you ask of me, but God does. And if you are to be His instrument, then it is my job to protect you."

  "The way you couldn't protect my father."

  Jonathan tightened his grip on her elbow and said nothing. She stumbled by his side. The buttons on his uniform gleamed as they stepped into the sunlight.

  ***

  She didn't have much to move. Tamar's mother Maacah hadn't left much to her and Absalom, just enough to get by in the likes of Ramah. The shekels behaved differently at Naioth, materializing and multiplying
in emptied-out pockets and leaving enough odd bits of change to procure a meal or a drink when needed, or a chemical cocktail when desperate. Money changed hands among unseen forces in Naioth. Maybe Yahweh just enjoyed being a pickpocket in reverse.

  Tamar's hairs stood on the back of her neck as she towed her belongings past City Hall. She didn't have to look up to know Amnon stood before the third-floor window, watching her Dromedary's slow passage. Nothing got by David's eldest.

  Beside her, Jonathan said, "I won't let him touch you."

  She whispered, "Too late."

  Whoever lay spread-eagled on the mayor's couch couldn't be half as fun as the terrified adolescent of old.

  Jonathan added, "I won't touch you, either."

  "You could lose your job for taking me in."

  "I won't."

  Tamar assumed Jonathan's answer was more an issue of faith than politics. A nervous laugh bubbled up her throat. What would the chief of police say if he knew she'd been told to kill David and destroy the world? This twisted universe was the only one Tamar knew. Who was to say a better one existed?

  Yahweh.

  If Yahweh was so damned powerful, then why didn't He do His own housecleaning? Abraham's arguments with God must have set a sick precedent for collaboration. Humans were very adept at doing His dirty work, not to mention their own.

  "I hate prophets," she growled.

  Jonathan nodded.

  "So do I."

  Jonathan's properties lay in Ramah's historic district, close to Samuel's former digs. Tamar took some comfort in knowing that the chief of police lived in better quarters than the mayor. Tamar pulled her belongings up narrow streets, swerving past the occasional pothole. City Hall's gilded cupola shone below in late afternoon light.

  Rumpled and sweaty from the climb, she parked her Dromedary and trailer just outside a high cast-iron gate. They waited for the old mansion's locks to release. Twilight peeked around turrets and Jonathan's grandson Micah buzzed them in.