Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name

by Edward M. Erdelac

  “You are still Manasseh Maizel. Manasseh Maizel, cowering before the dark, cringing at monsters though you have stood on the neck of a prince of hell. These things you speak of, these Great Old Ones—old they may be, but who is greater than HaShem, whose power you have felt all the days of your life?”

  “But,” said the Rider, “what if they are older than HaShem?”

  “Stop! Now you tread on dangerous ground,” Kabede warned, holding up one hand. “And down a path worn down by one you know well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The one you call Adon,” Kabede said. “You walk in his footsteps. Adon, who called himself ‘Lord,’ but who was called ‘Acher’ once—Other One. Let me tell you of your former master. Do you know the legend of the Four Sages who entered Paradise?”

  “Yes,” said the Rider. It was comforting to relate his lessons to Kabede, and he did so now, like a schoolboy. “Yes, the Four Sages. Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuyah and Akiba ben Joseph. Only Akiba ben Joseph found peace and was unharmed. Ben Azzai was destroyed by what he saw, ben Zoma lost his mind, and ben Abuyah…,” he paused. “What are you saying to me?”

  “Elisha ben Abuyah declared that there were two powers in Heaven,” Kabede went on for him, as the Rider felt his pulse quicken. “He severed the root of his faith and was doomed to an immaterial limbo. Unpunished in Gehenna, but unable to enter the World To Come, he hung in between, a raving soul trapped outside Sheol in the Yenne Velt, yet not a ghost, for he never died. His disciple destroyed his body with fire, and the smoke continued to rise from his grave for years after. For nearly two thousand years…until he was reborn.”

  “You’re saying…that Adon is Elisha ben Abuyah?”

  “He told Lilith your true name, it is only fair that you know his.”

  “That’s not possible,” the Rider said. “Reincarnation…”

  “Not reincarnation. Not properly. Reconstitution. Elisha ben Abuyah never died. Let me tell you the truth behind the legend. The Four Sages were merkabah riders. They navigated the seven hekhalots and came before the Throne of Glory. Rabbi Akiva ascended with a pure heart, to bask in the glow of HaShem. But the other Three Sages sought forbidden knowledge in his shadow. The Mishnah speaks of Belimah—the Void, and the Olam ha-Tohu; the universe of primordial chaos that existed prior to Creation, which is it forbidden for man to study.

  Just as there are five gates to the divine realms and three to Gehenna, there exist three gates to the Olam ha-Tohu. One is hidden beneath the Temple mount, and is plugged by the Foundation Stone with which the Lord capped the waters of the abyss, the floodwaters that destroyed the earth in Noah’s time. One lies in the seventh hekhalot, beneath the Throne. The location of the third is unknown. Even as Rabbi Akiba ascended, Elisha ben Abuyah led the way through the gate to look upon Belimah. What he saw destroyed his faith, just as it killed ben Azzai and drove ben Zoma insane.”

  “Maybe he saw…the Outer Gods. The Great Old Ones.”

  “Who can say?” Kabede said. “Even I don’t know that. But I do know someone who holds answers.”

  “One of the blue monks?” the Rider asked. “Chaksusa told me…he told me it was one of them who taught our Teacher of Righteousness.”

  “No,” said Kabede, somewhat darkly. “I do know of these blue monks. I encountered them once in Arabia. Their abbot is not of this world, not of this universe.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He and another of his kind pursued one of these creatures into our universe, ages ago. That is what they told me. Whether or not our Teacher of Righteousness was a student of the blue monks, I do not know. But rightly, this is not their fight. In the past they have intervened and no good has come from it. As you know, one of them was corrupted and set himself up as a god. They are misguided at best, perhaps because they do not belong here. No, if there is anyone who can tell us more of Adon’s scheme and this Hour of the Incursion, which you say Sheardown mentioned as ‘unleashing hell’ upon the Earth, then there is but one whom we can consult. It may be that he can call off the demons that pursue you as well. The Adversary. Satan.”

  The Rider set aside his bowl.

  “You propose…that we summon Lucifer and confront him?”

  “No,” said Kabede, reaching over and taking the Rider’s bowl and stacking it in his own. “I think we should go to see him.”

  Kabede rose and went to the pile of packsaddles against the rocks near the animals. He produced his own bedroll.

  “But not tonight.”

  He cleaned the crockery with sand, and the Rider lay looking up at the stars listening to him work before he finally settled down to sleep.

  * * * *

  “What I’m sayin’ is, we should all go down there and get that uppity nigger and that Heeb and drag their asses back here,” Long George said, spitting on his own floor in his agitation and wincing at the pain in his shoulder, which one of the local whores had bound up with a scrap of stained bed sheet.

  He had been saying that for a day and a half. Not content to solely work himself into it, he was now plying the other tramps and killers of Escopeta with cheap whiskey and bad bourbon, coaxing them into doing it for him.

  There were about twenty men in The Senate: violent, desperate types who had drifted in from Escopeta’s surrounding hog ranches and lean-tos, drawn to the sound of gunfire like buzzards to a death rattle. Escopeta was a place most men came to to mind their own business, a haven to lay low and stay out of sight for a while. But Long George’s fiery talk combined with the greasy bottles he had produced to supplement their meager suppers of beans (scraped off the floor from where they’d fallen earlier, Amonson suspected) was going a long way towards convincing them that going down to the valley where smoke had been seen and the two fugitives were most likely still camped to round them up and bring them back here was a good idea.

  Amonson himself had a hankering to repay the black bastard who busted his teeth, but he had seen Killer Jew Maizel’s willingness to shoot and was not keen on facing him again. He was in the minority though, even among his partners. Ocobock and Dorado were all for going, he supposed because neither of their injuries were quite so permanent and disfiguring as his own. He sucked at his seeping, bloody gums, running his tongue over the little nubs of jagged enamel still remaining there. He would have to see a dentist. He hated dentists.

  The main point of contention between the mob seemed to be whether to kill Maizel and the nigger or take them in for the reward and if the latter, how to divide that between twenty men. By now a couple other literate types had drifted in and read about the five thousand dollar reward for the return of the scroll (that bit of news had understandably soured Ocobock and Dorado against Amonson some, a sourness that might have been more bitter if he hadn’t successfully pleaded a vague lack of understanding of the wording of the bottom part of the reward poster).

  The jump in the bounty pulled most of the men off the fence on the matter, but Amonson could smell greed. It smelled like bad breath, palm sweat and dank dollars. He knew that if the capture of the Killer Jew and his partner was successfully carried out, some of the men here would be thinking about ways to increase their three hundred dollar reward, and some others would never make it to the marshal’s office to collect.

  “Way I figure it,” Long George went on, “it’s the roomful of us against one and a half men.”

  “He didn’t hit like no half a man,” said Dorado. His wrist was soaking in a bucket of cool well water. It was as purple as Queen Victoria’s knickers. “That stick busted mi muñeca pretty goddamned good.”

  “I was talkin’ about the Jew,” said Long George. “I seen ‘em when he was in here. He looked to be half dead.”

  “Still managed to pop you, George,” Ocobock said. A sizable welt on the side of his head bespoke his own encounter.

  “Well, but I ain’t no gunfighter. Never claimed to be.”

  “So where’ll you be when the shootin’ starts?” Am
onson whistled through his busted teeth (and this elicited a few sideways glances and nods from the other desperados). “In the back with that shotgun waitin’ to clean up? No thanks, boys. I’m gonna take in the evening air. I’ve took all the medicine I care to tonight.”

  The uproar of disagreeing voices renewed and Long George at his counter tried to quell them all by banging on the counter with a revolver as Amonson shrugged past the others and headed for the door.

  Ocobock caught his arm.

  “You sure? Five thousand dollars is a lotta money,” he said.

  “Too many buzzards on this carcass,” Amonson said. “You do what you want. I’ll check the horses, then I’m to bed.”

  He stepped out into the early evening dark, gingerly stroking his ruined mouth with his fingertip, and found three pale men standing outside in a line, as if they had been waiting for him.

  “Hello there,” said the middle one, a Dutchman, by the sound of his accent.

  Amonson paused, taking them in. They were well dressed in frocks and waistcoats, their necks strung with a number of silvery medallions. They were covered entirely in pale dust, having apparently ridden hard and long across the desert. They looked as if they’d rolled in flour, and the white of the dust made their eyes seem black in the dim light from the doorway. They were armed with pistols and rifles, and were all three of them entirely hairless. No eyebrows even.

  It made for a somewhat disconcerting overall effect, for the men appeared uniform, right down to the same placid expressions, the same thin, patronizing smiles. There were subtle differences, and he knew the shocking white of them was just the trail dust, but at a glance, they looked like a trio of identical, hairless albinos.

  “Hello yourself,” said Amonson. He moved to walk around them, but they spread out, denying him the street.

  “What’s the idea?” he snarled.

  “We’re looking for a man,” said the Dutchman in the middle, the tallest of the three. “We believe he may have come this way.”

  The Dutchman reached into his coat pocket and brought out a sheet of paper which he snapped open with a flick of his wrist. Maizel’s face, lined with creases, stared back at him.

  “Popular fella,” Amonson said.

  “Yes,” said the Dutchman. “Have you see him?”

  “He went east with a nigger leadin’ a couple burros. Probably camped out by the Valle del Torreón.”

  “The Valle del Torreón,” the Dutchman repeated, slowly, rolling his ‘r’s,’ as if trying out the words. He looked at his two partners.

  “Yeah. You can’t miss it. Better hurry though,” he said, angling his thumb at The Senate behind him. “Most of Escopeta’s goin’ after him.”

  “He was with someone, you say?”

  “Yeah, a nigger with a stick. Sonofabitch busted my teeth out. You’re welcome to him.” He tried to move past them again, but they closed ranks, barring him. He glared at the two men, and they only smiled in return.

  “Mister,” he sighed, “I had a real rough day, losin’ my teeth an’ all. You boys wanna get outta my way now?”

  “How many people live here?” the Dutchman asked, looking around dubiously at the other hovels and buildings. He released the poster of Maizel, let the light breeze catch it. It fluttered off into the dark like a ghost and disappeared.

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you go back inside?” he said, fixing his dark eyes on Amonson again. They seemed wholly black now, like they were filled with oil—a trick of the light. Amonson felt a nagging twitch at the back of his skull, though. Something was off about this bunch. They weren’t just bounty hunters. There was something crazy about them.

  “Why?” he mumbled, backing away and turning so that the pistol on his right hip was concealed. His hand went to it in the most surreptitious way that he could manage.

  “Because we’re going to kill everyone here,” the Dutchman said. “And it’ll be so much easier.”

  Amonson always hoped a woman’s breast, or a stack of gold coins, hell, even the glass handle of a beer mug might be the last thing he ever wrapped his hand around. No, true to how his life had gone up to that point, it was his gun.

  His fingers closed on it, and he saw something he didn’t understand. Then it all got away from him, flushed away in his own screams, a searing, improbable pain, and blood.

  * * * *

  The Rider prayed in the early morning with Kabede. Though he wore his phylacteries and Kabede did not, and though the Falasha’s words were in Ge’ez and not Hebrew, the Rider felt a warm rush of nostalgia, like clean clothes or his mother’s home cooked hamin, or the smell of old paper in the yeshiva, and the melting wax of the shamash candle. He heard in the beautiful intonations the sound of his father’s fiddle sawing out a lively mazurka, so loud and fast it seemed to spiral up to heaven and move the feet of the angels. He had not worshiped side by side with another in long, lonely years. The sensation was warm and too big for his heart to contain. It spilled out in his eyes, and when he removed the tefillin and set them back in their case, he had to dry his cheeks with his sleeve.

  Kabede saddled his burro, and the Rider did the same. The two said nothing as they worked, then Kabede said;

  “You will keep those heathen accoutrements about you?”

  The Rider sighed. It was an old argument.

  “Yes. They’ve served me in the past.”

  “Have they? Or have you served them?”

  The Rider’s coat was open, and Kabede could see the forty-four Solomonic talismans he wore, along with the various non-Jewish wards.

  He reached out and touched the circular svastika medallion.

  “This one, is it not a pagan symbol of sun worshipers?”

  “Well, it’s an old symbol,” the Rider began defensively. This was the first talisman of questionable origin Adon had ever made for him. “The Hindu revere it as a symbol of the evolution and involution of the universe. But it has appeared in many different cultures. This one is from the Parashat Eliezer. If you look closely, it’s composed of the Aleph and Resh, and the words emanating from it are Aramaic. It’s a meditation tool, nothing more.” It was the same argument Adon had made him, he realized. It had come out of him automatically, as if the man was speaking with the Rider’s tongue, reaching out from the past.

  “And this one?” Kabede said, touching a pendant inset with golden Arabic script. “This is not Hebrew.”

  “The Ayat al-Kursi,” the Rider said, “is a prayer in praise of God.”

  “Which god?” Kabede asked dubiously.

  “Allah, who is HaShem,” the Rider answered. It was the first completely non-Judaic talisman Adon had given him. He remembered his master reciting the Arabic inflections word for word. It came back to him like a schoolyard rhyme:

  “In the name of Allah

  Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

  Allah!

  There is no god but He, the Living,

  the Self-subsisting, Eternal....”

  He felt like Adon now, and Kabede was in his place. Was he corrupting the man? No, he knew this was a divinely inspired ward. He had used it to expel a possessing demon from the body of a young boy in Arabia years ago. The villagers had not understood English or Hebrew, and the prayer of the Ayat al-Kursi had done the job.

  Kabede touched then the Abbada Ke Dabra, a triangular Abrasax stone the Rider wore. It was the last talisman Adon had given him before he abruptly left for the war. It had been after he had been turned aside by Metatron, and when the disapproval of the other Sons of the Essenes had been at its highest.

  It was an inverted triangle, with the seemingly barbaric phrase Abbada Ke Dabra at the top. The word was repeated below, the last letter missing, and repeated all the way to the bottom, always subtracting the last letter until only ‘A’ remained.

  Adon told him the phrase was a corruption of Ahbra Kedahbra, the Aramaic for ‘I will create as I speak,’ but this had not seemed right to the Rider. He said it was a way
to diminish the power of a demon of negative influence by giving it a name and then breaking it down to nothing. The reverse side of the amulet depicted a strange, chimerical winged figure with a serpentine, tentacled body and…

  The Rider took the talisman from around his neck and peered closely at the figure. He now knew why the vaguely draconic statue of in the chamber beneath Red House seemed familiar to him. A crude depiction of it, grinning, brandishing its flail and shield appeared on the back of this, the last gift his teacher had ever given him. He wrinkled his face in disgust and flung it far away from him into the desert.

  What would have become of him had he not gone off to war? Adon would have poisoned him further. He might’ve been wearing amulets dedicated to The Dark Mother and the Black Goat. His Volcanic pistol might have been inscribed with the same blasphemous images he had seen on Sheardown’s gun. He might’ve stood by as Adon slaughtered the other Sons. He might’ve joined in himself.

  Kabede nodded approvingly.

  The Rider shook his head.

  “You want to go to hell with me?” he snickered.

  “I would have no other at my side.”

  The Rider buttoned his coat.

  “And the others?” Kabede said sharply.

  “The others I will keep,” he said. He had used the other talismans Adon had given him for good, and the rest had been gifts, like Misquamacus’ horse fetish, and the red coral amulet a kindly fisherman had given him in Italy. He would not dishonor the memory of the givers.

  “Can you tell which of those are of God and which are of man…or worse?”

  “I have to have faith that I can,” the Rider shrugged.

  “We will see if you are right,” Kabede said. “Come.”

  He led the Rider and the animals to the precipice where he sat piping the other day. In the morning light the Rider looked down upon a stark desert valley, perhaps a hundred miles to the far side, where blue mountains rose like frozen waves in the hazy distance. The rocky, dry shrub covered land here gave way to a white barrenness, so empty it looked like a master painter had run a wet rag across a landscape, furiously blurring some area he had perceived to be less than his intent in a tantrum of creative frustration.