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

by ed. Tim W. Lieder

  Even within the safety of his own home, Jonathan stood guard outside the door to the bath. Tamar performed her ritual purifications in the mikvah, trying not to garble her prayers. How did one pray when given divine license to commit patricide?

  So that David can live as he is supposed to live.

  Maybe Absalom wouldn't have to die in the repaired universe. Maybe Jonathan could live as well, serving at his king's side. Solomon's visions could be wrong, couldn't they? Yahweh could change His mind, couldn't He? After all, He'd struck bargains in the past. With Abraham. With Lot.

  God doesn't change His mind.

  So Samuel had told Jonathan's father Saul, who had known that hard truth better than anyone. David had recounted that story in one of his more lucid moments. Tamar's father then added, “Unless, of course, He decides otherwise.”

  She shivered as her water cooled. Asking the Deity for favors would do her no good. She'd been sent here to gather the strength she needed to open the fabric of creation. To accomplish what her father's tortured strumming could not.

  She dried off, pulled on a green silk robe, and padded after Jonathan. The mansion's fragrant hall ribboned down a straightaway. Guest rooms dropped behind. Plush carpets receded and left a blank stone floor in their wake as the air turned musty. Crudely-hacked stairs marked the entrance to the farthest turret, nowhere left to go but up.

  Jonathan lifted an old lantern off its hook and struck a match.

  "No electricity upstairs?" said Tamar.

  "No."

  She heard the hoarseness in his voice. His harsh look silenced her. Exaggerated shadows preceded them up the stairway's tight coil. They climbed single-file. Without a railing for support, Tamar braced her palms against curved walls, her bare soles clammy. The stone steps swallowed Jonathan's footfalls.

  One moment she wondered if the bride price for Michal was a treasure locked away, like a fairy tale princess imprisoned in a high tower. The next moment it struck her as a holy of holies, fit to be seen only by priests.

  She whispered, "What's in the room?"

  Jonathan paused in his long climb for a moment. Then he shook his head and pressed on.

  A narrow slit in the turret's thick wall afforded a bird's eye view of Route 18. The straight-edge road dwindled to its vanishing point in the night. The black silhouettes of mountains blotted out the horizon. If Tamar looked hard enough, she could see the lights of Naioth, distant and fuzzy like a nebula.

  Why me?

  Solomon's answer rang in her head.

  Because you know what it is to be sacrificed.

  And that gave her the right to sacrifice others? Tamar gritted her teeth, wrenched herself away from the view and followed Jonathan. He had reached the landing and pushed an ancient skeleton key into a lock. Gears tumbled, sounding deceptively well-oiled.

  He murmured, "My father had asked for one hundred. David gave him twice that."

  The heavy oak door eased open and warm air enveloped them in a sickening blast. Tamar reeled from musk as the police chief's arm came around her waist.

  At first glance the shriveled brown lumps looked like roaches. Then Jonathan raised his lamp. Tamar made out the shapes impaled on the rounded wall.

  "Philistine foreskins." He spoke in a flat voice.

  They studded the plaster, curling in on themselves like little fists. Nail heads reflected the lamp light.

  Only her thin silk robe separated Tamar's nakedness from the cobbled room's treasure. She clutched Jonathan's jacket, trying not to throw up. "Saul was a madman."

  "Wasn't he?"

  Another tilt of the lamp and the nails shone like eyes out of wrinkled sockets.

  "But even madmen know what they're doing."

  Was he talking about his father or about Naioth? Tamar couldn't tell. Bathsheba's boy must have been mad himself, to send her to this place. Saul himself had been no stranger to the dance club.

  She started to giggle and couldn't stop. Why end at foreskins? Why not enact the entire castration fantasy, her desired fate for Amnon writ large? Had the Philistines been circumcised before or after they'd been killed? Why limit oneself to just a single act of pain? Cold sweat ran into her eyes. Tamar doubled over, blowing dry heaves.

  "You didn't know what Ramah was like before David drove the Philistines away." Jonathan's voice took on a dreamy tone as his warm hands held her shoulders. "They spilled in from the coast. Their seranim bosses ran this town and every single outpost and oasis up and down Route 18. You saw their colors on every street corner. You heard their revved-up Dromedaries day and night."

  His words fell to a whisper. "Amnon was righteous compared to them. My sister Michal's rage lives in this room because of what they'd done to her. She didn't bear your father or anyone else any children, because she couldn't."

  The chief of police fell silent. Tamar eased her hold on his sleeve and sank to her knees. The cold floor ferried chills up her spine.

  "The Philistines learned to be subtle after that, Tamar. They learned to be patient, and that's how they exacted their revenge on David. Through my father, and through Naioth."

  What a fool she'd been, to believe the club drugs could have come from God. Who peddled the wine? Who struck the secret deals in Naioth's dark corners? Who couriered mysterious packages back and forth, to Gath and Ekron, then west to the sea, to Ashdod and Ashkelon and Gaza?

  She choked, "Not the navel of Yahweh, after all."

  Jonathan knelt beside her.

  "Except that it is, Tamar. That much about Naioth is true, but you'll never hear me admit it in public. There's too much at stake. My father had ordered all of our priests killed, but he couldn't touch the prophets. They remain active at Naioth, where God keeps them alive and the Philistines keep them addicted. David's dependence is only part of the reason he's never left that place. That awful music he plays is the only form of prayer he's got left and it keeps the prophets by him. Believe me, Tamar, he is still battling the Philistines."

  Her eyes couldn't turn away from the helpless foreskins. "Solomon said I knew what it was to be sacrificed."

  Jonathan nodded.

  "So does your father."

  ***

  Solomon's instructions had been clear. Tamar caught Jonathan's wavering gaze, as he locked her in. She listened to the click of his skeleton key and then his muffled footfalls as he descended.

  She could still smell the room's pungencies. How much fresh air remained before she suffocated, trembling on a stone floor in pitch blackness, frozen and blind? She certainly couldn't have picked a better spot to hide from Amnon. Compared to her current terror, the Mayor of Ramah faded into a blip of creation.

  "Solomon said you'd speak to me, Yahweh." Tamar hugged her breasts, teeth chattering. "I'm listening."

  Two hundred nail heads watched her. Tamar craned her neck, blinking. Where was the point source for the light? Michal's bride-price room held no windows. No moon cast its illumination. No planets. No stars. Nothing to reflect.

  Heady warmth climbed the rounded wall; circles formed around the metal eyes. Soft colors at first, half hidden. A muted orange sheen spread across the floor, illuming Tamar's naked feet, brightening her muscled calves before touching the hem of her robe. Rings of dead foreskin began to glow like embers. They continued to burn, unconsumed.

  Tamar held her breath as they uncrumpled; they stretched forth from their nails, supple and elongated, edges flaring. Heat blew through their stretched membranes. They emitted a sound that began as a gentle whistling, like wind through trees; then the song took on an urgency like a harp abandoned on a hilltop, all of its strings alive at once. A prelude to the horns.

  She jerked as the circumcised mouths opened wide and released a sudden blast that shook the wall. Tamar squeezed her palms between her knees to keep from covering her ears. Every bone in her body shook, but she had come to listen. The dismemberments trumpeted, waving at her like wild anemones.

  If she shut her eyes, all she heard was triu
mph. Empty shells, swelled and proud. Tamar forced herself to watch, chiding herself for being naïve enough to have expected words.

  Nothing surrounded her but sonorous charges of dead air. The annunciation of a mirage. Two hundred hoods slit from the shaft, the world pulled inside-out with a scream.

  The foreskins gained in length, twisting as though threaded on a spindle. They curled and thickened, honey-colored now, silken. Tangled in a terebinth branch in the forest of Ephraim.

  Absalom's corpse hung before his sister, his green eyes dulled. Drowning in a pool of orange light, Tamar beat her breast and wailed.

  By morning the pool had deepened in color and stuck to her thighs, turning Michal's bride price room into Tamar's red tent. Seven days she bled onto the floor. Seven nights the foreskins roared. Tamar dreamed of berry bushes. She ran through the woods of Ephraim, awakening with purpled fingers and sweetness on her tongue.

  The bride price taught her that nothing mattered. Civilizations rose and fell. Scriptures twisted. Promised lands fell to dust. Freak rains buried sand dunes in overgrowth. She believed what she wanted to believe, and everything mattered then.

  Her flow abated as the foreskins shriveled like fruits left too long on the vine. Tamar awoke to a door cracking open and the sight of Jonathan's back. Her stained robe dragged on the floor as she followed him. She kept her distance for as long as it took to reach the mikvah.

  ***

  Her Dromedary shrieked across the desert. Some day Tamar would ride Route 18 to its end and skid off the cosmic edge, flying like a stone from a sling.

  Today, she had a world to destroy.

  Her boots touched gravel as she swerved into the lot. Naioth's strobes turned her jacket and pants to sparkles. She stepped inside the warehouse. The mosh pit continued to writhe, a single organism beside a murky stage.

  Absalom stood next to her, studying the knife in his hands.

  "At least I'll win the hearts of Israel," he mused. "For a time."

  Tamar didn't question how she heard him through the din. She slipped her arm around his waist. Give her a grip on the blade, give her one moment, and she could shear him. Neutralize the instrument of his death.

  But that leonine mane grew back. Year after year, cut after cut. Two hundred shekels of weight on which to hang.

  Absalom passed her the onyx handle. Her green eyes glowed, reflected in tempered steel.

  "I'm ready." He gave Tamar's shoulder a last squeeze and faced toward the stage. "Help him."

  The knife slid into her boot. Clad in black leather, Tamar ducked between warehouse struts and glided forward, a slick skimming the walls. She skirted the seranim bosses in shadow and averted her eyes from narcotics changing hands. The prophets phosphoresced in her sight now. She tracked them like a trail of bread crumbs to the stage.

  Their rags whirled to her left and right, before and behind her. Asahel and Elhanan, Mahrai and Sibbecai. Heled. Eleazar. Lunatic warriors. Japhia palming a handful of pills. Nathan injecting a vein.

  Wedged behind a speaker, Bathsheba's boy huddled slack-jawed in mid-high, his eyes unfocused. Tamar eased tender fingers against Solomon's curls and moved on.

  The closer she got to the music, the more Naioth shimmered like the surface of a lake. Reality rippled around her, ready to part like the Reed Sea one moment and slamming shut the next. Then it turned deceptively solid, a meniscus held together by the surface tension of faith.

  The black wood of David's lyre called to the black wood in her boot, vibrating her handle along the grain.

  Forgive me, Jonathan.

  The lyre's dissonance strangled the air. Tamar gazed upon twitching limbs, then at David's blistered and bleeding fingers. She glanced back at the moshers sweating under hot lights, stripped concubines working their poles.

  Someone pressed a vial into her hand. She almost smashed it against the ground, but its gelcaps weren't drugs. Bathsheba's boy managed a dazed smile before he turned away.

  The universe cracked, and the blast from a thousand ram's horns hurled Tamar onto the stage before the crack mended. When it did, she looked into the face of an old man with sallow cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. David swayed before her, exhausted, his flesh and muscle melted away.

  He whispered through flaking lips, "Quickly."

  Tamar spilled the gelcaps into her hand and made a fist above his head. Oil spurted from between her fingers.

  "I anoint you, Father."

  Seranim reflected in his eyes. Out of the shadows now, reaching into their vests.

  Tamar bent to grab the handle and drove her blade upward as the shots rang out.

  ***

  "You seem distracted, Aunt."

  Smoke curled up from a distant forge. Tamar listened to the far-off hammer and clang of carpenters and smiths, a quiet prelude to the explosion of industry to come. The 80,000 quarriers alone would make enough noise to rend creation. "Wouldn't you be?"

  "I suppose."

  "This won't be an ordinary house, you know."

  Her niece's chin dimpled as she grinned. Tamar's young namesake had grown into a beautiful woman. Absalom's daughter. The dimple came from her mother, but her eyes were his.

  After a life lived from tent to tent, the Ark of the Covenant was finally coming home. The thought of Yahweh readying to settle down sounded more blasphemous than it felt. Considering God in such familiar terms would certainly invite disaster if spoken aloud.

  Would it? Tamar had to admit to herself that she wasn't really sure, but it was probably safe to remain silent. At times like these she existed apart from the others, even within the boisterous throngs of Solomon's court. She'd never settled fully into the world. Was it any wonder she felt an odd and abiding bond with the Ineffable?

  All the sweet-smelling wood to come, the cedar and cypress and algum dressed in gold and bronze - all of the precious stones, all the purple and blue and crimson yarns, all the engravings - if those could satisfy the Deity, then what was her complaint? The sheer size of the Temple would anchor the world in place.

  Such a structure must endure forever, no?

  If existence were solid. In Tamar's dreams existence ran like water. Like sand. She couldn't explain.

  Passing clouds stretched their fingers, making daylight play on Mount Moriah. Tamar and her niece followed their changing forms as the younger woman sighed in admiration. Perhaps the shadows delineated the Temple's rooms and porches to its upper chambers and inner chambers. Perhaps they matched the blueprints that the new king consulted, before the clouds that cast them vanished into blue or fell as rain.

  For Tamar, the future cut a razor's edge upon a land with no vanishing point.

  But the land was filled with dunes. And the dunes always shifted.

  Judith & Holofernes

  by Romie Stott

  Judith didn't know how many times she'd beheaded Holofernes. Counting skulls didn't cut it - too many given away as souvenirs, or repurposed as building material. Bone is stronger than tent; that's a fact.

  The first time, she begged to do it. Her husband was dead, and there wasn't much to occupy her time. She felt patriotic about the whole thing. Seduce the enemy general, drink lots of wine, go back to his room, and off him. A one time deal. If she died, well, she died. That was war.

  Only she didn't die, and he didn't either, and the constant beheading became a full time job.

  Holofernes asked for a massage. Judith knelt on his back as he lay on his stomach. She placed a knife at his throat and leaned backward. The advantage of this position was arterial spray. The blood would flow away from her, due both to gravity and the position of the cut. Judith imitated a kosher butcher: sawing indifferently, careful not to apply too much force as she cut toward herself.

  Judith showed the head to her maid. It was still attached to Holofernes. "Would you look at this head," said Judith, rubbing Holofernes' temple with her thumb. The maid leaned in for a closer look.

  "What are you doing?" asked Holofernes.r />
  "I do this not for myself, but for my people," said Judith.

  Holofernes wore a gold torc, which made for a nice guide rail. Judith was confused, but trusting. She slid the sword along the torc and it was like cutting through butter. Holofernes made a lot of noise as he bled out onto the pillow; which Judith found distasteful. Her maid waited with a sack, unsure what to do with her hands.

  Judith stole Holofernes' sword. It was like a long dagger, or perhaps a short scimitar. Her maid seemed to wear a crown. The curls of Holofernes' hair matched pleasingly with the folds of draped canvas.

  Holofernes knelt at Judith's feet, head buried between her legs. With great moral certainty, she turned his tongue from its business and held his face to her thigh. She lifted a sword over her head, and as he turned to look, her hand tangled in his hair.

  Holofernes was a dirty old man. When he slept, he lay on his back and threw his arms out to take up the whole bed. Judith, as always, took the time to dress. Her maid helped her put pearls in her hair. The two went through Holofernes' large collection of swords and settled on an elaborately engraved number with only one sharp side. This reminded them of both jewelry and kitchen knives. Judith picked a bad angle for her first hack, and sliced through Holofernes' jaw and into his mouth. As he gurgled, she calmly struck again. Her maid patted her shoulder comfortingly.

  Judith stuck her fingers in Holofernes' mouth. She carefully drew a dotted line across his neck with a pencil. He was frightened, but froze half-in, half-out of bed, stunned by the sudden appearance of several fat cupids.

  Judith wore a large hat. Holofernes' head, once removed, was an empty sock. "Oh Holofernes," Judith seemed to say. She cast her eyes down and to the left, coyly.

  Judith's maid held the head on a metal tray, which she balanced on her own head. Holofernes' head was giant, easily the size of a roast turkey. Judith hurried to cover it as they raced down the hall.